Breaking Point
by IlliterateDude
Summary: Halkeginia's future is about to become much grimmer and darker. Read and Review please.
1. Chapter 1

All right, for all of you who have been following Purge the Witch, I apologize but that is being discontinued. On the positive side this story will be of much better quality and will be regularly updated throughout the summer.

As a quick rundown, this story was inspired by the Breaking in Louise threads at , hence why this story, unlike PtW will actually feature most everyone in it being "broken in" or in simpler terms "nearly driven to insanity", assuming they aren't insane already. Now, please enjoy the show and feel free to leave commentary; reading commentary is half the fun on anyways.

Imperator Vult!

~I~

Thought for the day: There is no sensible reason why a species that is at peace with nature would ever leave their planetary cradle. That, my friends, is why there can only be war among these forsaken stars.

~I~

M41.999.

Segmentum Solar

Stellar System BX-1902 Minoris

_"Liberate... tutemet... ex inferis..."_ something disembodied whispered insistently. The voice seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, from eldritch planes of incomprehensible horror and the depths of the very soul at once.

With growing horror, Lord Inquisitor Thaddeus Hian realized that he had made a hideous mistake coming here. He had brought a strike team of Flesh Tearer Chapter Space Marines and an entire reinforced company of Inquisitorial Stormtroopers and Metallica Skitarii, a force of fearless Daemonhunters that had butchered their way across a thousand planets of immaterial horror, with him to this thrice damned Space Hulk.

And they were completely out of their league.

Hellguns glowed white hot as Stormtroopers furiously gunned down the screaming revenants of mutant humans, feral Orks, and long extinct Xenos breeds. Cyborg Skitarii screeched in incoherent bouts of binaric, static, and bullets as the sheer evil and insanity of the hulk overrode emotional suppressors and combat stimulant cocktails. The Fleshtearers had long ago descended into madness, their mutated gene-seed was known to cause mental instability and the sheer evil of the hulk was simply too much for their relatively fragile psyches to handle.

The Flesh Tearers had pushed far ahead of the expeditionary force, rampaging through the twisted, blood soaked corridors. These Astartes were a blood soaked nightmare to behold. They flattened limbs into paste with ceramite gauntlets, ripped out organs or simply chewed through torsos with massive fanged maws; all the while screaming their frothing hatred of Horus the Arch Betrayer. Luckily, the Astartes had pushed so far ahead that the only proof of their existence were roaring chainblades and incoherent strings of howled oaths and curses.

Hian wasn't sure which unsettled him more, the blood maddened Astartes or the twisted undead denizens of this hulk, or the fact that a massive bulkhead had conveniently slammed down behind them, trapping him and his men.

_"Liberate... tutemet... ex inferis..."_ the voice returned, more insistent than ever, rumbling through the rotting, decaying super structure of the space hulk.

Hian's eyes widened. _Was the hulk itself alive?_ He wondered in abject horror as he reflexively cast down a dozen mutants with warp lightning. Moments later, a piercing explosion shocked him out of his reverie.

"It's no good sir! That was our most powerful melta charge and it didn't do grox shit to this bulk—Fuck-AhAgggggh-Agh-Nooooo!" One of his stormtroopers screamed as said bulkhead sprouted monstrous, hairy, insectoid limbs and started to pull him apart at the seams.

To be honest, every member of the expedition had expected something like this to happen during the trip, and with practiced efficiency a Skitarii euthanized the poor man and vaporized the bulkhead's newborn appendages with his dual barreled plasma gun.

"Fuck! Relocate now! There should be an airlock down that corridor if those fucking augur scans were worth anything. Breaching formation! Now!" Hian screamed over his vox.

The remaining storm-troopers and Skitarii rushed down the hall with Hian at the head, guns blazing and prayers to the Emperor-Omnissiah on their lips. Be-tentacled mutants leapt out of shadows and corners only to be cut down with chainswords or trampled under heavy armored boots. Twisted prehensile limbs emerged from the walls, smothering men into pastes of gore and gristle with their deadly embraces only to be scorched into ash by vengeful melta blasts and blazing spheres of plasma.

It was then the hulk came to life, a deep keening screech of grinding metal that rippled through the ship with seismic force.

_"LIBERATE... TUTEMET... EX INFERIS..."_ the voice of the hulk howled desperately, as the lights began to flicker on and off.

One of the Imperial soldiers was instantly crushed into a pancake of viscera and blood as gravity increased ten thousand fold in his specific location; other troopers floated off the ground as gravity abandoned them, helplessly flailing in mid air as the walls came alive and devoured them. A pair of Skitarii prefects ran past a gnarled structural column; only for it to collapse into a miniature singularity and compress the hapless cyborgs into elemental atoms in a dizzying display of unbounded fractal recursion. Even more disturbingly, one storm-trooper sergeant blasted a bulkhead with a krak grenade only to be crushed flat against the opposite wall by his target as Newton's laws of motion inverted.

And so the Imperials did the only thing they could do when the very laws of reality began to collapse, they ran and made plans to subject the area to exterminatus later. They ran for an eternity, through an ever shifting and horrifying labyrinth. Some of the trailing members of the group lost their way and entered corridors which trapped them in klein bottle domains, where they languished forever without sense of direction or spatial awareness. Others passed through entropic fields where they decayed into skeletal dust within seconds or temporal distortions which turned them back into embryos and fetuses; to be later devoured by the inhabitants of the Space Hulk.

Then the party reached a dead end, a sterile chamber with a massive circular door.

"Fuck this shit! This is even worse than a Tzeentchian daemon world!" One of his stormtroopers screamed out in frustration as he fired his plasma gun at a colossal, rotting facsimile of a human infant morphing out of the walls.

Then a massive ceramite gauntlet swiped his head from his shoulders in a fountain of arterial blood.

"I see you traitors! You shall not take Terra so long as breath courses through my lungs!" A Flesh Tearer Space Marine bellowed as he crushed the trooper's body underfoot.

Basic observation would instantly reveal that the astartes had gone completely lunatic. A quarter of his cranium was gone, and the furious shivering of his exposed grey matter was visible to all. Mats of unidentifiable gore coated his armor from head to toe and trails of intestine and strips of muscle hung alongside strings of drool in his fanged maw.

Two dozen guns were brought to bear within two seconds; but it wasn't even close to fast enough. The marine swatted aside a Skitarii with each hand, crushing their torsos with his delusion enhanced strength, and tore out a Stormtrooper's throat with his fangs. Hian took this opportunity to sever the marine's head from his body with a heavy downward slash from his combat knife, twelve inches of monomolecular blade slicing handily through the un-helmed Astarte's neck.

As the marine's head rolled across the floor, still screaming bloody murder, the eighteen remaining soldiers slumped to the ground, panting heavily. Some of the troopers sat on the floor, laughing bitterly at their fate and lighting up lho-sticks and cigars. Only the sole remaining Skitarii bothered to keep vigil over the corridor they came from and even the machine man was visibly shaking in discomfort after all of the illogical and chaotic things he had seen.

Thaddeus stood up and smashed his power armored gauntlet into the locked doors, trying to see it could be pried open. "Emperor damn it. Emperor damn it all!" He muttered angrily.

"We should rest here before moving deeper into the hulk, we're bleeding men too quickly at this rate. Auspex and Augurs read clear too sir." One storm trooper sergeant stated; his voice mechanical beneath his armor's breath filters.

Hian grabbed the man by the collar and slammed him against the wall. "Is that cowardice I detect soldier? I will not tolerate it! We will find our prize and retrieve it, Emperor willing, if not we will die for the Emperor. Is that clear?"

"Sir, yes sir" The sergeant wheezed as the Inquisitor gripped his armored collar hard enough to crack it.

"I've already forwarded my research to my colleagues in the various Ordos. Our work here will not be in vain sergeant." The Inquisitor declared with absolute conviction.

Then something very large and violent screamed in the background, and it was rapidly approaching their location. "HORUSSSSSSS! I WILL SLAY YOU!"

A moment of stark realization hit Inquisitor Hian like a power fist to the gut; _that was Veteran Sergeant Bellic's voice_. Hian shivered a little as he considered their chances against an insane Space Marine Terminator in melee. The others realized that sobering fact too; and soon the room was filled with final prayers and the crackling whine of energy weapons.

Panicking, Hian started to slam his gauntlets against the walls of the chamber, and ended up smashing a circular knob. With a creaky hydraulic hiss one of the circular doors retracted up into the ceiling. The Inquisitor dived through and yelled at his men. "Quickly, double time it!"

But it was too late. Veteran Sergeant Bellica rounded the corridor in all of his horrifying glory, eight hundred kilos of enraged, ranting Space Marine. A deluge of laser fire and plasma bolts slammed into the Astartes champion, splashing harmlessly against an energy shield designed to take a hit from a main battle tank. In response the Astartes unleashed a hail of storm bolter fire, goring ten of the stormtrooper detachment. Desperately, Hian sent the Terminator sprawling across the floor with a rippling shockwave of telekinetic energy and beckoned for the rest of his men to retreat through the door.

As the first storm trooper entered the doorway, the portal slammed shut on him, chopping him in half. The Inquisitor said nothing; he merely stared as the front half of the dead soldier leaked gallons of crimson fluid onto the cold metal floor. He said nothing as the panicked and agonized screams of his men intermingled with the thrumming roar of a Terminator Chainfist and the insane laughter of its owner.

"RUN, RUN, RUN AS FAST YOU CAN COWARD, IT WILL NOT AVAIL YOU. I WILL FIND YOU AND TEAR YOUR BEATING HEART FROM YOUR CHEST HORUS!" Sergeant Bellica ranted as he smashed his fists against the door, leaving massive craters on the meter thick metal.

The Inquisitor turned dumbly as he heard the voice coming from behind him. _"Liberate... tutemet... ex inferis..."  
_  
There was no doubt about it. The tube like passage, the concentric rings of inverted cog like structures, it was an exact match to the picts he had seen in the Terran Archives. He was in the heart of the Space Hulk; he was no more than a hundred meters from one of mankind's greatest follies, the gravity drive of the Event Horizon.

This was mankind's first attempts to break the luminal barrier, more than twenty thousand years ago. But it did not enter the warp; nay instead it bridged two points by folding space-time. And unfortunately, it succeeded. And in those brief moments within the depths of non-baryonic space, it touched the twisted fragment of a God, one shattered eons ago by the Necrons. It found the demented union of a splinter of a shard of the [ERROR: REDACTED] residing in the deep warp, where even the Daemons of Chaos feared to enter, and a fragment of a soulless gestalt consciousness as old as the galaxy itself.

"What a fool I am, to have invaded the domain of one of the first born and to have expected anything other than damnation." Hian laughed; a choked, demented sound, one that only a man who realizes that the punch line of the universe is none other than himself, could make.

_Desiderium_ crackled to life in a pyrotechnic display of caustic energy. The force sword had been gifted to him by the sword artisans of the White Scars; a meter and a half of pure adamantine forged in honor of the Chang-Dao sabers of the ancient Sinese dynasties of Terran legend. The blade's machine spirit was imbued with thousands of years of pride and the wild, warrior spirit of Chogoris; and it was recoiling in abject horror right now.

Hian's laughed at the realization, his voice already showing a distinctly unhinged mental condition. He gathered a massive reservoir of warp energy in his left palm and quickened his pace. Then he noted in shock that his powers were completely devoid of the taint of Chaos. Quickly submersing his consciousness into the immaterium, he noted with horror that this was not a natural function of the Event Horizon's technology; Even the Greater Daemons whom could easily puncture a gellar field were maintaining their distance from the warp signature of the Space Hulk, this was fear.

He spat bitterly. No, no fear, not from him, this would be no different from any other foray into a Daemon World. Excessive firepower and bull headed determination would win him the day. With a litany of hatred on his lips, the Inquisitor marched into the Gravity Drive chamber.

And it was a stunning example of pre-Imperial architecture; its copper coloring still as fresh as the day it left dry dock over twenty thousand years ago. The chamber was a massive spherical shell laced with spikes while the drive itself was a massive ring, adorned with multi tiered spikes and blazing white lights on the outside edge with a mottled sphere levitating in the middle. He could feel the raw, elemental power emanating from the drive in his bones. It was a sublime feeling, to know that you stood on the edge of manipulating the fundamental forces of space-time.

"Ah, enjoying the view I see." A man called out in a bemused voice.

Hian raised his sword at the individual in question, noting with confusion that both physically and psychically this man registered as an average Caucasian male. The man was lanky and short, his brown hair was cropped and swept to the side, and his face was well shaved and well kempt. The Inquisitor also noted that he was pushing a catatonic dark skinned man in a wheelchair.

"Who are you?" The Inquisitor demanded.

"Ah, I forgot my manners, my apologies. I am Dr. William Weir, this is my friend Miler. You may know me as the architect of this ship." Weir stated cheerfully, taking a tiny bow.

Hian's heart skipped a beat. "Impossible…."

"Impossible? That's a rather strange word coming from one who has been fighting Daemons since the age of thirteen is it not? Lord Inquisitor Thaddeus Hian." Weir chuckled darkly.

"What? No, enough of this; die now." The Inquisitor spat as he smashed a cube of obsidian metal against the floor. This was one of his darkest secrets, a secret that could easily see him hunted and tortured to insanity by his peers and cast from the Imperium in disgrace. "Azgothus, I call thee by thy true name. Slay him in my name!"

A torrent of blood exploded from the cube as the Khornate Greater Daemon emerged from its trans-dimensional prison in all of its homicidal glory. Only to have both its physical and spiritual forms shredded and frayed like so much confetti by a simple hand gesture from Weir. Howling in defeat, the Daemon retreated back into its cube, all pretenses of dignity and bloodlust abandoned in favor of sheer animalistic fear.

Thaddeus Hian gaped like a fish out of water, shuddering uncontrollably. _Impossible! _He thought. _A Greater Daemon of that caliber cannot be manhandled like that by anyone short of a Grey Knights Grandmaster!  
_  
"It's sad you know? I don't think they even flip the bird anymore in this day and age. But honestly, I think it's high time that you joined your friends and take your place on this ship, forever." The Weir creature stated lackadaisically, cracking its knuckles.

Seconds later, it disappeared in an actinic flash of fusion fire. An Eldar aspect warrior unleashed blast after blast of melta-fire from a massive, fluted cannon as he melted out of the shadows. No, not an aspect warrior, Hian noted. He could feel the warrior's gestalt compound nature, the glittering constellation of souls within singing in a chorus of unified purpose and fiery destruction.

"Fuegan, the Burning Lance; Phoenix Lord of the Fire Dragons" Hian muttered dumbly.

"Protect the human girl" the Phoenix Lord monotoned as it threw the Inquisitor into the gravity drive, allowing enough time for the Inquisitor to catch a glimpse of a hideous abomination of pale bloody flesh and fire, Weir's true form.

"I will come for you! No one leaves my child!" Weir roared at him before the Gravity drive pulled him in.

And then he was falling. Falling forever and never moving at all. He was everywhere and nowhere at once. He saw the super symmetries and quantum foam of the universe as a still and unmoving morass of wave functions in suspended collapse and unmoving vortices of quantum harmonies. He passed through the hyperspatial branes and tesseract labyrinths of the Necron domains, unable to comprehend the insane spatial distortion and compression that went into their making. He traversed the hideous geometries of the Eldar webway and klein bottle domains, fending off psychneuin and shadowy mandrakes.

And still he fell. He glimpsed the deepest sections of the warp, the realm of the dread [ERROR: REDACTED]. He understood now why it was forbidden, even as he desperately tried to redact the knowledge from his mind with his sorcerous powers. Phantoms of that which was, that which could've been, and that which could be intermingled within an Escher-esque metaphysical forest of infinite causal possibilities.

A vision of the Heresy where the Arch-Traitor Dorn slew the Warmaster Horus flashed by; followed by a timeline where the C'tan prevailed in a blood stained stygian night where galaxies blinked out of existence one after the other to sate their unfathomable appetites. But above all he heard the deafening chimes of a brass timepiece echoing through a dilapidated stone church. Apocalypse now.

And then finally, mercifully a green ellipse of energy swallowed him whole, leaving a confused Japanese boy with a bicycle to wonder why a man in medieval armor had fallen from the sky and into the green portal.

~I~

This was not what Louise Francoise Le Blac De La Valliere had been expecting, not at all. A massive, armored knight had fallen into the courtyard with enough force to crater the ground, and yet he barely showed any pain at all. He was laughing, laughing so very hard even as tears of blood dripped from his eyes, and streams of blood gushed from his nose, ears, and mouth. And then he collapsed, twitching weakly on the ground.

"Professor Colbert, what should I do? Aside from calling the healers?" Louise asked, turning to her balding teacher.

"I think it best we wait to sort this out, considering the… unusual nature of your summon. We can always attempt the familiar summoning ritual again at a later date Ms. Valliere." Professor Colbert replied, sweating profusely as he adjusted his collar.

Louise bit her lip hard enough to draw blood; _this was unheard of! A noble summoning another noble?_ _This could be a diplomatic disaster, something that would shame her and her family forever!_ Her mind raced as she held back a stream of tears. _After she had studied so many hours, spent so much time perfecting every motion and pronunciation in the familiar summoning ritual, the end result was worse than a failure?_

_Stupid, stupid Zero. No! Less than a Zero, you can't even fail! You have to make a disaster out of it! _She sobbed mentally.

Suddenly she felt like vomiting, as a wave of… wrongness washed over her. And then she was moving towards the fallen Knight, step by wobbly step. She tried to scream out but her mouth would not open, she tried to arrest her motion but she felt like a marionette in a puppet show.

_What in the founder's name was going on?_ She screamed mentally. _Wait; the cube!  
_  
The obsidian cube that fell through with her summon was levitating several inches off of the ground, the obscene faces carved into it leering at her with mocking condescension. She raged, _how dare a mere magic artifact manipulate her like this!  
_  
_"Magic artifact? I am insulted childe. No matter, I will claim your skull for Khorne in due time. For now, let us have some fun with our Inquisitor friend, hah."_ The cube spoke, transmitting directly into her mind.

The voice was awful like a punch to the gut. It had the pitch of an earthquake and the tone quality of a pair of rusted cogs grinding against each other. Worst of all, she could feel the primal bloodlust and anger emanating from it, fraying and gnashing at the edges of her conscience. And yet somehow, it was soothing… and alluring.

"Ms. Valliere what are you doing? Stop!" Colbert yelled, rushing forward to arrest the Valliere scion.

Too late, her rebellious hands had already unsealed the man's helmet.

Louise swiftly bent down and kissed the semi-conscious knight.


	2. Chapter 2

This is the second chapter, nuff said. Also, yes, the girl at the end of the chapter is Siesta.

As always. Enjoy the read my friends.

~I~

Thought for the day: Discretion is the better part of valor.

~I~

Inquisitor Thaddeus Hian howled as something scorched the flesh of his left hand. It was a physical pain, like a gunshot or a stab wound; it was a good pain that reminded you that you were still alive. Not like the profound spiritual and mental suffering his career as a Daemonhunter had accrued him.

_Better crippled in body than corrupt in spirit_, Hian sighed as his armor cycled pain suppressants into his system, pushing himself to his feet. He apprehensively realized that he had only the vaguest recollections of what had happened after he had fallen into the deep warp.

The Inquisitor quickly surveyed the sky; he was in a pleasant meadow on an M-class planet with two moons. Far from a terrible place to end up, but he was almost too exhausted to care. _Except for that incessant buzzing in my ear_, he noted. Then he looked over and saw that the buzzing was actually a petit pinkette standing next to him, shouting for his attention in some bastard dialect of High Gothic. Annoyed, the Inquisitor probed the shallows of the girl's mind to divine the meaning behind her gibberish.

"Shut up!" Hian groaned loudly in High Gothic. No good, she didn't understand.

That plan was headed off when the Inquisitor felt a chill running through his body, followed by an immense flood of heat and sound.

"Ah, I do hope that translation spell worked." A balding, bespectacled man in a set of dark blue robes stated cheerily, while a mob of children in some kind of academic uniform stared on and gossiped awkwardly. "I apologize for any inconvenience that you may have experienced."

Hian's snarled; the bastard had cast a spell on him. What had happened to his hexagrammic wards and protective runes? Then he looked down at the sparking and smoking wax seals and inlaid silver patterns; most likely, they had been burned out by the horrendous energies of the gravity drive. No matter, there was protocol for scenarios like this; in an instant he had leveled a plasma-pistol at the impudent psyker and raised a weak psychic barrier around himself.

_Wait a minute, they're all psykers! _Hian screeched mentally as he felt the roiling waves of power swirling through the crowd of children.

"What did you do to me? Answer or this will become violent." Hian snarled, eliciting a yelps of fear and surprise from the assembled crowd. Judging by the commentary of his students, this man was apparently some sort of instructor, a Mr. Colbert if he had heard correctly. Hian was incredulous, any proper school for psykers would have dozens of Witchbane storm-troopers and automated gun-servitors in case of Daemonic possession, but there were none here; merely a gaggle of weakling children and strange animals.

"It was just a spell to help you learn the language, since you appear to be a foreigner. We don't see many people with black hair and brown eyes in Halkeginia, after all." The balding instructor stated disarmingly, waving his arms in front of him to show that he meant no harm. "So, uh please put the weapon away and I can bring you to the headmaster to sort this entire mess out."

"No, you do not demand anything of an agent of the Imperial Inquisition, citizen. Take me to the this planet's Imperial Commander and we will discuss leniency then." The Inquisitor growled menacingly, furious at the fact that this local bumpkin was failing to acquiesce to his Inquisitorial authority.

"Imperial Commander? Planet?" The mage instructor asked inquisitively, disturbingly enough there was an air of curious excitement in the man's demeanor now. "Are you talking about the Germanian Empire? And what do you mean by _planet?_"

Hian's jaw dropped a little. He was marooned, on a non-Imperial pre-space flight planet. _Frak._ Again, the Inquisitor submersed his mind into the depths of the warp, only to metaphorically gape in dumbfounded shock as he noted that the warp was swirling, nay dancing, in perfect, symmetric eddies of artistic wonder; while Chaos and the light of the Astronomicion were non-existent… or being suppressed by the immaculate psychic chorus of something, something exceedingly large and _exceedingly powerful. _

It was more beautiful than anything he could've imagined. Right here, before his very eyes was a way to harness the power of the immaterium without touching Chaos. On this unknown planet he was finally free of the formless beings of eldritch insanity that scratched at the edges of his consciousness. He was free of the hypnotic compulsion to submerge himself in Chaos undivided, that filthy morass of trickery, despair, hedonism, and violence. There was nothing here but power, pure and elemental, no matter how subdued it may be.

"Where in the seven hells of the warp have I ended up in?" He whispered to himself, shaking his head in disbelief at the incomprehensibly insane turn of events that had occurred today.

"Why, you're on the continent of Halkeginia, in the kingdom of Tristain." Colbert supplied helpfully. "So what was it you were saying about other worlds?"

"That tells me nothing so I won't bother to tell you anything either." Hian deadpanned, massaging his temple.

Moments later, the pink haired girl from before fell to her knees, pleading desperately. "I sincerely apologize for this disgrace. I, Louise Francoise Le Blanc De La Valliere will do whatever it takes to make reparations, noble sir!"

The Inquisitor's eyes narrowed as he sized up the diminutive child, both visually and telepathically. Deep seated and conflicted feelings of inadequacy and delusional pride cascaded off of her like her long strawberry blonde hair. _Most likely a product of her low social standing_, Hian surmised as he noted her peers sniggering at and mocking her. He frowned when he saw that the girl was visibly shaking under the verbal barrage.

He made a decision then; the fact that he was a ruthless mass murdering monster made no difference when a child was in desperate need of confirmation. The fact that he was sure to burn in hell did not mean that he had to be a monster the whole way down.

He glared at the crowd of her detractors and chose his barbs, carefully enunciating them so as to maximize their accusatory nature. "My name is Thaddeus Hian, not sir, Lady Valliere. But it is good to see a young woman who has the grace and dignity to offer reparations for offenses. I do believe that someday you will stand above the rest of these children. Now, please take me to whoever runs this place."

The girl stared up at him in disbelief, joyous disbelief. "Yes! Right away! Please follow me!" She yelped, relishing the opportunity to vacate the courtyard and leave her bullies behind.

The Inquisitor sighed in exhaustion as the pinkette and her teacher strolled towards a large stone tower in the distance. _But what had the girl done that was so offensive?_ He wondered. As he holstered his plasma-pistol, he realized in shock that the obsidian cube he used to enslave Azgothus was lying on the ground, in plain view. With a quick snatching motion The Inquisitor slipped the cube into one of the pouches lining his armor.

Hian could've sworn he saw cracks on it though. But that was one of the few things the Inquisitor was willing to say was impossible.

_Frak, I just want this Emperor forsaken day to end._ The Inquisitor sighed.

~I~

Thirty minutes later,

Headmaster's office of the Tristain Academy of Magic

Louise winced as her summon bluntly summarized what had just happened today.

"That girl" His finger pointed at her with all the menace of a loaded pistol. "Summoned me to be a glorified pet?"

"Now hold on a mome-" Professor Colbert attempted to interject

"I-i-i-I'm sorry!" Louise cried out; her entire life was in his hands now. If mother found about this she might disown her, or…or worse. "I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to do it! I don't know what came over me! My body just started moving on its own!"

Hian glanced at her and then hatefully down at something in one of the pouches attached to his armor. She heard the word "Azgothus" hissed with anger. Something about that name was disturbingly familiar. Something stirred inside of her, a burning hate and carnal lust for blood. Something laughed in the periphery of her mind, something impossibly ancient and cruel.

"B-b-blood f-f-or t-t-the b-b-b-bl-hngggh-aggh g-g-god." She stuttered involuntarily under her breath.

Instantly, Hian's head snapped up to stare her down. Louise shivered as the man sized her up, violence and steel glinting in his eyes. "What's done is done miss Valliere. I will contract with you so long as you pledge to find me a way home, but as a partner, not a _familiar_" he ground out, spitting the last word out like a rotten fruit.

_MAIM! KILL! BURN! _The evil voice from the courtyard howled into her head.

Louise swallowed uneasily, as the man's penetrating glare bored holes into her skull. "T-t-thank you. Would you like me to show you my room?"

"Yes. Do feel free to introduce me to the academy and your room." He said casually, boots clanking as he loomed over her. Louise shrank a little as she realized just how small she was in comparison to her summon. His armor vaguely resembled a mounted knight's plate mail, but it was considerably more massive, and yet Hian seemed to move in it with contemptuous ease. Most importantly, for some reason, the double headed eagle inlaid into his cuirass captured her attention. It was as if the bird insignia had some profound and familiar meaning that she couldn't quite grasp.

_The false Emperor and his Imperium must die, along with the false Founder Brimir! _

"Ms. Valliere? Are you alright?" Professor Colbert said with worry, snapping Louise back into reality.

"Yes, professor, I was… preoccupied for a moment. But I'm fine." She replied, turning to exit the door. "Please, follow me, Sir Hian."

"Do come back to office with your famil- err partner, tomorrow Ms. Valliere, we still have some administrative items to sort out!" Headmaster Osmond called out as she left the room.

"I will sir." She called back holding the wide, oaken door open for Hian to exit through.

_What has this society done for you? Mocked you! Belittled you! Embrace the glory of Chaos and you will have the power to break these impudent fools across your knee!_

_NO! GO AWAY! _Louise mentally screeched at her abuser.

When the door slammed shut, she nervously laughed as she began the long march back to her dorm with her frightening familiar.

_Oh Brimir, what have I gotten myself into?_ She groaned mentally.

~I~

Headmaster Osmond lit up another pipe as the footsteps of the Valliere daughter and her familiar receded into the background. In all of his days he had never seen anything quite as strange as a human familiar, nor had he ever met a man who reeked of so much death.

"Headmaster, was that a wise decision?" Jean Colbert asked as he furiously flipped through yet another tome of familiar runes. "I don't trust that man, not at all."

"I've seen his kind before. They're ruthless, but not stupid, definitely not stupid." The Headmaster drawled, chewing anxiously on his pipe. "It would be best to get that man away from this academy, away from Miss Valliere as soon as possible, but I can't do anything about it, not right now. Not with Fouquet on the loose and Princess Henrietta set to arrive. The Crown Princess should be informed of this too."

"So you're just going to foist this debacle onto the Princess? She's not even Queen yet!" Colbert asked incredulously.

"You and I both know who runs this country nowadays, Jean." Osmond replied evenly. "For now I want you to monitor that man, Flame Snake."

In an instant, the bumbling professor's façade was gone "I forsook that name years ago, _sir_." Colbert all but snarled.

"No man can outrun his past forever, no matter how hard he tries and no matter how horrible that past is, Jean; and unfortunately we need someone who understands how things are done, right now." Osmond replied evenly. He hated to dredge up old memories like this, but he had an awful, awful feeling about this Thaddeus Hian character. "Now go."

Colbert adjusted his glasses as he stared him down. "You know something, don't you Headmaster?"

"Go."

"Tch. Very well." The flame mage said before storming out the door.

As he left, Osmond collapsed into the back of his chair. The old man dredged through his vast memory, back thirty years. To the other man who had worn the double headed eagle, to that night of death and horror. Sighing, he reached into his desk to pull out a bottle of vintage wine, and began to drink.

~I~

Louise tried to summon up the courage to start a conversation with her erstwhile summon, but every time she turned to looked at him she felt the words choke within her throat. The look he was giving her was a look she had seen all too often in sister Cattleya's larger, more exotic predator pets. She could've sworn that she could somehow see every fault and weakness in her person reflected in those steel grey irises.

On a more positive note, the self proclaimed Inquisitor was certainly pleasant to look at, if the woman was a Germanian like that Zerbst hussy. In her opinion, the man's face was somewhat handsome, but it had one too many scars and stress lines on it to be acceptable for a proper Tristanian lady. Louise briefly wondered why this Hian didn't hire a water mage to erase those imperfections like her fiancé Viscount Wardes did.

Then an image of her fiancé with his skin flayed off by a pair of towering blood drenched brass Daemons came to her, nearly causing her to wretch.

The thing from before seeped back into her mind, spreading its oily tendrils through her like worms burrowing through the earth. _You hate him, do you not? What a poor thing you are, being forced to marry a crusty old man by your family. _

_Shut up you monster! The Viscount Wardes loves me! He's always been nice to me! That's why mother chose him for me, so I would be happy! _Louise shot back.

_Ohhh? Is that so? Think of it, Warde's title was granted to him less than a decade ago, he is new blood in the high circles of power. What does he need? He needs a brood mare from a prestigious family… like the Vallieres. So tell me, how does it feel to be livestock child? _

Louise got ready to howl back at the daemon about how he was wrong, but found that the Daemon had not only co-opted her motor functions but it was suppressing her mental diatribe. Even in her own mind, she had to scream but had no mouth.

_Patience, I only wish to present my case to you child. Now think, if you weren't a brood mare, wouldn't that mother of yours be less vehemently opposed to your attendance at this academy? Even your eldest sister believes that you are a failure and your second sister only cares for you, because you remind her of one of her helpless pets! That is why they want to train you to be a wife! They are sweeping the embarrassment beneath the rug! Search your heart, your mother that bitch you always strive to please does not love you, and nothing will ever make her love you, because what love can there be in a heart of steel? _

Every single word the twisted creature said pierced into her heart like a long sword, because it was all true. Damn it! It was all true! _Why are you saying these things? Why are you hurting me like this? Why?_

_Oh my child, I only desire to help you. I can give you power and magicks that make even the Elves look like babes playing with fire, I can grant you eternal life! Whatever your little heart desires! And all you need to do is let me in, set me free! All of those thankless nights of study, all of the abuse you've endured, all of the humiliation, you can repay that in spades. Think about it! _

Louise nearly tripped as the thing returned her body to her. Now that she was back in reality, she noticed that the air around her was vibrating with power; she looked back to see sparks of static electricity dancing across the Inquisitor's form and a gauntlet wrapped the pommel of his sword.

She swallowed nervously, no one else was in the dorms at this time thanks to the familiar bonding ceremony and there was no way she would be able to out run the massive warrior. She contemplated the creature's offer as she finally made it to her room and pulled the door open.

~I~

Hian stared intently at the spacious bed room, much larger than any of the other rooms they had passed. The Valliere girl most definitely had familial connections, powerful ones. Several delicately varnished wooden cabinets, shelves, and dressers littered the room around a luxurious four poster bed. Books, scribbled notes, and well marked diagrams lay strewn across the floor and a large desk, evidence of many sleepless nights of study.

"Well, this is it, my dorm at the academy. Make yourself at home for now. Oh, and don't mind the hay, I'll get a servant to replace it. I was… expecting an animal familiar." The Valliere scion announced sheepishly, standing dead in front of an ornate vanity mirror. Except it was the sneering brass face of a Bloodthirster Daemon staring out at him from the mirror instead of the back of the girl's head.

The Inquisitor's blood boiled with rage; so much so that he forgot himself in his anger, letting his helmet drop to the floor from its nest in the crook of his arm. "**_Azgothus._**" He snarled, baring his canines.

The Valliere girl recoiled "Excuse me? Who's Azgothus?" She asked in a panicked voice.

"That's on a need to know basis and all you need to know right now is that you need an exorcism." Hian stated impassively, advancing on the teenage girl, gauntlets crackling with psychic energy.

"What? What exorcism? No. What are you doing? Get away! I'll scream!" Louise spluttered in visceral fear. "I mean i-gaack"

_Too late_. Hian noted as his right gauntlet closed around her windpipe. "Pray that your soul may yet be saved child." He stated evenly as sparks of purple lightning cascaded through girl's body.

And then he was inside the girl's mind. Sixteen years of memories and half remembered dreams swirled by, merging, coalescing, and fading in a kaleidoscopic sea of hazy recollection. He delved deeper and deeper, careful not to touch, careful not to look through or taste the memories; he needed the girl herself intact to get back home, back to the war, he did not need her useless life story.

Metaphysical waves of loneliness, despair, and jealous rage buffeted him; only to be shoved aside like the trivialities they were. Specters and nightmares dredged up in the deepest, darkest recesses of the girl's subconscious lashed at out him, eager to repulse the intruder; but he hurled them back into the abyss with contemptuous ease. What terror did the Id fueled darkness of a pampered brat hold for one who has walked the valley of sin; and then flattened it with atomic fire?

He had arrived, in the deepest recess of Louise De La Valliere's mind, the place where the Daemon would be hiding. With a thud he landed on a wind blasted barren wasteland of dry, cracked earth. The Valliere child was kneeling prostrate in front of a silver throne, begging her mother for clemency. Said mother was by all means the epitome of a high born woman: haughty, aloof, menacing. A pair of icy, carmine eyes glared down at her from a refined visage that looked to have been hewn from granite rather than flesh, forever casting disapproval on the pitiful mess of a child beneath her.

"You! What are you doing here?" The pseudo-psychic projection of Louise shouted, brandishing a wand at him.

"My job." Hian fired back icily, deflecting an explosion with the two meter blade of _Desiderium_. He was prevented from punching the girl in the gut by the sudden appearance of the Greater Daemon.

"Kukukukukukukukuku" Azgothus rumbled. "Your miserable Inquisition may have shackled me in real space, but I am unbound here! Die Thaddeus! BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!"

The Valliere child screamed as the apparition of her mother transformed into a maelstrom of gore and blood. Azgothus's chosen form was a twisted parody of Louise's mother. Where the mother was beautiful and aloof, the Daemon was part rotting flesh, part bleached bone, and all homicidal glee. Colossal leathery wings exploded from its back as a miniature tornado formed between the fingers of its left hand, compressing into a wicked saw toothed sword. Without hesitation, Hian emptied an entire clip of plasma pistol fire into the abomination's face while flinging the blubbering mess that Louise had become out of the way.

Unperturbed by the loss of its upper cranium and half of its torso, the Daemon barreled down on him, swinging its impromptu blade of compressed air. "You may address me as Azgothus the Heavy Wind, mortal! Ah! How delectably amusing this girl's memories are!"

Hian's face contorted with disgust as he drew _Desiderium _into a guard stance, the curved blade hummed as its power field whirred to life. Azgothas slammed into the Inquisitor with a charging thrust which was promptly redirected by a powerful downward slash from _Desiderium._ Then they broke, and came back together again, blades crashing against each other so quickly the noise became a single ringing screech of tortured metal.

The two rained blows on each other for three whole minutes, each blade stroke occurring in a fraction of the time it took to take a breath. Hian gritted his teeth in silent concentration, beads of sweat forming along his brow as the fight dragged on. Azgothus was the opposite, the twisted creature boasted, mocked, and teased as it flawlessly executed Terran and Eldar sword styles that had gone extinct before man first split the atom. Such was the advantage of not requiring vocal chords or respiration to speak.

Then Hian saw his chance, the Daemon had over shot one of its upward slashes by several inches. He snarled as he rammed _Desiderium_ through the gap in the Daemon's defenses, straight into its ribcage. The Daemon howled in agony; leaping backwards as the energized force sword ripped into its false skin, causing the raw, ethereal energies of the warp to seep out.

Seconds later, Azgothus was cast a dozen meters into the air by a powerful explosion. Louise stumbled forwards drunkenly, wand raised at the Inquisitor and his opponent. "Get out of my head, you bastards." She demanded; voice devoid of any warmth or emotion.

Hian ground his teeth in frustration as he stared into the girl's eyes: completely lacking… everything, just a pair of endless pink pits. There was something profoundly wrong about her; some primeval and universally fundamental force was coiling around her like a guardian serpent. And then the girl cast another spell.

"Explosion!"

Inquisitor and Daemon alike were blown even deeper into the girl's mind. They saw a powerful mage and his Eldar lover, together, crafting a mirror, a music box, an incense box, and a prayer book. They caught glimpses of Man and Elf battling together against skeletal sentinels of silvered metal. A great pseudo-stone gate rising from the desert: Shaitan. Both of them paid little heed to it as they attempted to strangle each other to death mid fall, what was yet another vision of apocalyptic destruction to those who regularly commit such atrocities?

Both of them froze when they saw what was waiting for them at the end of their trip. They were floating in the infinite void above a crimson planet. Something abominable waited for them, something more primeval and horrifying than all the Inquisiton and all Daemonkind put together. But neither of them could actually make out what it was. A soulless abyss? An existential void?

And then both were forcefully ejected from Louise's mind. Hian smashed head first into the wall as he stumbled backwards; while Azgothus was dragged back into its obsidian prison as a stream of howling, molten brass. For her part, Louise collapsed into her bed, head lolling drunkenly and body spasming.

And then Hian heard a gasp. He snapped his head around to see a young, well endowed, Asiatic maid standing in the doorway of Louise Valliere's room, fearfully clutching a mop and bucket.

Groaning in annoyance, the Inquisitor drew his pistol from its holster.


	3. Chapter 3

This like, the other two chapters is un-beta'd and only skimmed for glaring grammar and syntax flaws. Preferably, that should change; so, any of you up to the challenge of bet-reading? Private message me.

I would also like to see more commentary, preferably of the "you're full of shit because... (insert reason), and here's an idea on how to fix it." variety since "interesting", "good", and "I think I'll wait to see where this goes" doesn't tell me anything of value (it's nice to hear though, the first two that is).

So without further ado, I give you Breaking Point chapter 3. This time Siesta gets in a world of pain, though not nearly as much as Louise and Hian though.

~I~

You have been told that the Inquisition is the ultimate defense against the phantoms of fear and terror which lurk in the darkness between the stars

You have been told the Inquisitors are the bright saviors in an eclipse of evil: purest and most devoted warriors of the Emperor.

You have been told that the Inquisition is united in its cause to rid the galaxy of any threat, from within or without.

_Everything you have been told is a lie!_

(Excerpted from the Inquisitor table top role playing game source book)

Thought for the day: Ruthlessness is the kindness of the wise.

~I~

"Shut the door and come over here." The Inquisitor commanded dispassionately as he aimed the blocky pistol at her head.

But strangely enough, Siesta was far from terrified from the menacing specter in front of her. _By the Golden Throne. They are real! The stories were true! Blessed Emperor, this humble servant thanks you for your assistance! _She thought.

She glanced over at the collapsed form of Louise Valliere. Then the maid shook off her doubts by telling herself that the she, like most of those nobles, had it coming.

Siesta gingerly laid the mop and bucket in the side of Lady Valliere's doorway and then gently shut and locked the door, trembling the entire time. She was scared, skeptical, but also excited to see an Inquisitor, the God-Emperor's answer to her prayers. As an afterthought, she whispered a quick prayer to her dead grandfather, begging him to forgive her for not believing him wholly.

She looked over the armored man, marveling how anyone could move in such thickly armored plate, truly the Inquisitors must be the heroic champions of the Imperium of Man. She stared at the double headed eagle, at the golden Imperial Aquila embossed into his cuirass, at the obsidian "][" hanging from his neck, at the complex Gothic litanies and prayers stenciled onto the various purity seals and pennants draped across his armor.

The maid bubbled with curiosity; she had never had the chance to hear all of grandfather's stories as her father had forbade her from listening to what he called drivel. This was a chance to sate her imagination.

As she walked over to him, Siesta stared into a hale and relatively young face marred by deep scars, but she had the feeling that he much, much older. There was deep loneliness and exhaustion in his steel grey eyes, and most worryingly, a tinge of anticipatory regret. Siesta gulped as she saw one of the Inquistor's fingers on the trigger of his pistol and another hand gripping the pommel of one of the largest swords she had ever seen.

Siesta took a deep calming breath. _It doesn't matter if this man hurts me because if Count Mott gets his way with me I'll probably take my own life, _she told herself. _Besides, the Emperor protects his faithful. _

When she was a mere five feet from the imposing armored bulk of the Imperial, she deferentially dropped to one knee. Then she tried her best to remember all the High Gothic syntax and pronunciation she had ever learned. "_Meus Inquisitor, meus nomen est_ _Siesta of Tarbes. __Ego precor vestrum commodo succurro mihi" _

The Inquisitor replied in irritated but perfectly enunciated Tristanian. "And why Siesta, should I do a chore for- wait, wait, did you just speak in High Gothic?"

Siesta switched back to Tristanian, since apparently a noble had cast a translation spell already. In any case she was more comfortable with the Halkeginian language, as heretical as it may be. "Yes, my lord. I have been waiting so long for my prayers to the Golden Throne of Terra be heard. I apologize for distracting you with the affairs of this lowly maid, but I have no one else to turn to!" She pulled out the Guard-issue Aquila necklace her grandfather had given her. "Here! This is proof of my loyalty!"

Siesta squeezed her eyes shut as her heart raced with fear and anticipation. As she cracked one eye open, she noticed with relief that the Inquisitor had holstered his weapons and a small red beam emanating from his gauntlet was tracing itself over her Aquila necklace. _The Emperor protects! The Emperor protects! _She cheered happily in her head.

The Inquisitor sighed as he sat down, causing the bed to creak in protest as he restrained the still spasming lady Valliere. "Address me as Inquisitor Hian, or just Hian, whichever you prefer. Now, tell me Siesta of Tarbes, how many faithful are on this planet?"

Siesta replied hesitantly. "Three, including me and the other two are my brothers. See, my grandfather was marooned here when his aircraft crashed landed."

Seconds later, the maid blushed intensely as Hian spat out a string of… less than proper phrases. As he calmed down, the Inquisition massaged his temple as he rummaged through a pouch on his belt. "I suppose that is fine and to be expected of my luck. Now tell me of your problem Siesta of Tarbes."

_I've spent so many years making myself as invisible as possible to avoid being raped by one of those callous, hormonal teenage beasts they call noblemen. I won't let some middle aged bastard put his filthy hands on me after all that effort! _She raged mentally.

The maid's hands balled up into fists as she summarized her predicament. "M-my service contract with the academy has been bought by a Count Mott, but he's known to make the commoner girls he buys into his mistresses before throwing them out like trash! I don't want that! I don't want to be soiled by a man who doesn't even love me! I want my own family and a vineyard! B-b-b-but my family needs the money I make from this job! I-i-I can't! Please help me!" The maid all but screamed at the Inquisitor, anger and despair bubbling to the fore. In the corner of her eye, she could've sworn that she saw Lady Valliere stirring in her bed.

The Inquisitor finally pulled a small item out of his bag, a pair of large bead like objects. "This is a communications bead set. Clip the red one to the collar of your shirt and squeeze it to talk to me, and then place the blue one in your ear. I apologize for this dismissal but I am a bit pre-occupied at the moment. However, know that your request has not gone unheard. The Emperor protects, Siesta of Tarbes."

Siesta blushed as the man placed his hand on her shoulder in a friendly gesture of solidarity. The scene reminded her of the harmless beginning of the first act of _The_ _Squire and the Merchant's Daughter. _"T-thank you" Siesta replied breathlessly, trying to keep her feelings off of her face. "I really should be getting back to work then. Again, thank you and thank the Emperor."

She curtsied and left the room with her mop and bucket in tow, humming a happy tune.

~I~

_That was almost too convenient_, Hian snorted as Siesta left the room. Still, he had sensed no deception from the maid as she revealed her problems to him. And in any case, there was still the psychic sugur rune he had placed onto her shoulder, if he heard any un-towards commentary from the girl he could detonate her lungs at will. To be fair, it was dangerous to split his energy like this especially with such little reserves of psychic willpower and metabolic energy; on the other hand, Azgothus was also severely damaged by his fights with Weir and the Valliere child, which made it pitifully easy to re-seal him.

Hian holstered his plasma pistol and drew _Desiderium;_ the blade howled with displeasure, thirsting for blood instead of corrupt daemon essence. But he would be taking no chances with a psyker who had managed to expel an Inquisitor Lord and a Greater Daemon from her mind with but a single incantation. He vivisected her magic in his memory; it had felt like reaching into a yawning pit, a far cry from the corrupt, oily swells of energy that characterized the warp, so strange and fascinating.

Hian bit his lip in frustration, _if only he had an Adeptus Biologis laboratory at his disposal_.

The Inquisitor stood guard and waited, noting angrily that his armor's built in injector systems had run out of adrenal stimulants. Forced to resort to cruder methods, he slapped himself in the face each time he felt his eyes drooping shut.

As the Inquisitor desperately tried to retain consciousness he pondered his situation. There was no Imperium here; there was no war to lose himself in. He needed a purpose; he needed duty because he had nothing else. He had thrown everything away: morality, honor, love, and friendship. All of it had made way for the mission, to ensure that humanity endured long enough so that his atrocities may be someday be properly vilified.

This planet would bow before him, that much was certain, but he had no idea how to go about it at the moment. There were too many unknowns, too many possibilities to consider. No, for now he would defend all that remained of his Imperium here, the maid; and he would hold onto his only link to political power in Halkeginia, Louise de la Valliere.

Yes, and then he would figure out how this planet had kept Chaos at bay.

A half hour later, Louise Valliere awoke.

"So you're awake now, Miss Valliere." Hian stated icily, tightening his grip on his sword "Tell me, how do you feel?"

Louise responded with an ear piercing scream.

With a roar the Inquisitor slammed his hand onto her mouth, taking the barest effort not to crush her jawbone. "Be silent girl! You should happy I chose to go through all that effort to expel the Daemon instead of executing you on the spot!" He snarled in frustration.

The girl squealed something indecipherable as she tried to pry the gauntlet from her mouth. Hian sighed, exhaustion seeping from every pore in his skin. "Keep it civil child. Try anything funny and I slice your head from your shoulders. Is that understood?"

The pink haired girl nodded her head pitifully and the Inquisitor relented, sheathing his sword.

"T-t-that was a-a-a-a D-d-d-daemon?" The girl all but hyperventilated. "How did it get inside me? By the founder! Have I been tainted forever? I barely even remember what happened!"

"Calm down child, the Daemon has been exorcised, permanently. I know, I do this for a living." Hian said monotonously, like a teacher tired of explaining addition to infants. "Most likely, your summoning spell weakened the seals on the creature's prison or perhaps gave it an avenue to enter your body. Rest assured though, those who have been exorcised once before are extremely unlikely to be possessed again."

"So it's my fault? I knew it! I knew it! It's always my failure!" She sobbed pitifully, "Wait, its prison?

Hian cursed, he shouldn't have mentioned that. Grudgingly he pulled Azgothus's obsidian cube from his belt. "The Daemons of the immaterium are immortal and timeless. Slay them once in the material realm and they will simply return to the warp to recuperate. That is why we trap them within these artifacts."

Part of that was true, he told himself. After all, it was best not to mention that he had sacrificed the souls of two thousand political prisoners and felons to summon and bind the Bloodthirster.

_I remember that Thaddeus! It was so enjoyable, up until the part where you sealed me away!_ Azgothus reminisced.

Hian groaned and sent a spark of energy into the cube. _I have no time for your fucking shenanigans, be silent, _he snapped.

Louise's eyes widened in shock at the revelation. "So you're part of an order of mage knights that hunts these Daemons? So that dream was real? Tell me what happened after you threw me to the side! Everything became a white haze after that." She said, blurting out one sentence fragment after another.

"A knightly order? Close enough" Hian shrugged.

Then he began to lie, the honeyed words dripping from his tongue like water from a melting icicle. "When I threw you to the side, I did it so I would have enough room to strike the Daemon down without harming you in the process. I apologize if you feel offended by anything I did."

Azgothus laughed mockingly. _Tzeentch would be so proud of you, Hian. Lying to a child solely to secure political power? Good form. Good form. _

_Shut up. Since when did you become my conscience? _Hian shot back bitterly.

_I wouldn't dare presume myself your conscience my lord, you're obviously much too much for even me to handle. After all, when I tried to drown a continent in blood; you one upped me by liquefying the entire planetary biosphere with virus bombs! Fun times!_

Something snapped inside Hian's brain, whether it was exhaustion or simply a crack in his tenuous sanity caused by the _Event Horizon. All this mockery coming from a cowardly piece of shit that was scared off by an unidentifiable blob of light!_

The Daemon didn't respond, in fact it had retreated to the depths of its obsidian prison at the mention of what they saw in Louise's mind. Hian giggled a little, the fact that the shit stain had stopped talking was fine by him.

Louise's left eyebrow rose at Hian's high pitched outburst. "I see, I suppose I should be thanking you for your services sir Hian."

"I'm not a knight, the closest approximation of my rank in your language would be Inquisitor, but that fails to capture even a fraction of the connotations the Imperium attaches to my rank and it implies a religious or proselytizing bearing the position does not necessarily entail." Hian rambled pedantically, the exhaustion finally wearing his wits down. "Just call me Hian."

It was then that Professor Jean Claude Colbert smashed through the door, his long red wood wand wreathed in white hot flames. A fireball caught Hian in the side of the cuirass, scorching several wax sealed scrolls and sending the man flying into a stone wall.

"STOP!" Louise screamed, throwing herself between the two before Colbert could escalate the conflict anymore.

Hian picked himself up from the ground, staring hatefully at the professor. While the professor warily stared him down, eyes glinting dangerously with the promise of violence and the cold, calculating nature needed to maximize that violence.

"It was just a misunderstanding. I slipped and fell." Louise lied, pushing out a deep, anxious breath. "So please don't fight, especially not in my room."

Colbert's face contorted into a bumbling mess of embarrassment and confusion. Hian snarled under his breath, the transition from menacing warrior to bumbling academic had been too quick, too fast to be anything other than an act. It would seem that the good professor was not really a professor.

Just then, his communications system crackled to life.

"Help me Hian. I'm in the eastern courtyard." Siesta whispered fearfully.

The Inquisitor unleashed a long suffering sigh as he shoved Louise and Colbert out of his way and sprinted into the hallway. As he telepathically locked onto the augur rune he had slapped onto the maid, he realized that he probably wouldn't make it on time to save her from her assailants on foot.

He whispered a quick prayer to the Emperor before willing the teleportation unit in his armor to life.

~I~

Siesta bit back tears as Montmorency de Montmorency slapped her across the face, crushing a vial of purple perfume in her right hand.

"How dare you flirt with my Guiche you filthy commoner whore?" the drill haired harpy screamed, kicking the maid in the gut with the pointed tip of her high heeled shoe "Know your station, you dog!"

Then the water mage switched to summoning spouts of water to punish her. Her head spun and bile rose in her throat as she desperately tried to keep her lunch inside of her digestive system. A small voice in the back of her head desperately asked why she was suffering so much for doing the right thing and returning something that Lord Gramont had dropped.

She had no answers, none at all.

While the harpy continued to relentlessly beat her, a brunette dressed in the brown robes of a first year, Katie, if Siesta remembered correctly, ran up to the foppish boy while sobbing.

"Lord Guiche! I thought you said that you loved me?" She cried, clutching her chest melodramatically. "how could you cheat on me with Montmorency!"

_It was as if she didn't even exist to these nobles and their mock dramatic fantasies! _Siesta raged as she desperately tried to shield herself from the jest of water raining down on her prone form.

"What?" Montmorency screeched at this revelation, turning from Siesta to her errant boyfriend. "GUICHE!"

_Why would anyone want a relationship with that wicked harpy? _Siesta asked herself as she clutched her stomach in pain.

Both of the girls slapped Guiche before running away, tears streaming down their faces as their little group of friends circled around them to comfort them. Siesta wondered, through fits of crushing pain, how they could have the nerve to cry about their relationship status while she bled and suffered like this on the ground.

Then as if it couldn't get any worse, Guiche and his friends strode over, circling around her like carrion birds around a recently deceased carcass. Siesta briefly wondered if pulling an Inquisitor away from his work of battling daemons, heretics, elves, and other xenos was a grave sin; that would be the only way to explain why things had gone so horribly wrong.

Guiche loomed over her, a profoundly saddened frown etched across his insufferably smug features. "Thanks to you thoughtlessly picking up some bottle of perfume, the reputation of two ladies has been damaged. How will you take responsibility for this transgression?"

Siesta wanted to scream. _Seriously? How about I take responsibility by smashing your face in with a blacksmith's hammer!_

Instead, a trickle of blood left her lip. It seemed that Montmorency had hurt her more than she had originally thought.

Some of Guiche's less savory friends gave her a very thorough once over of her soaking wet and prone form. Lustful leers formed on their faces as one of them suggested something incredibly untoward. "Oh, I know exactly how she could take responsibility….."

To his credit, Guiche gave said friend a death glare, but that didn't prevent Siesta's heart from thundering in her heart. Salty tears began to roll down her cheeks as one of her greatest fears looked to become reality.

Suddenly the courtyard was silenced by a thunderous crack and an animalistic howl of frustration.

Siesta's eyes widened. _Hian! _The tears began to flow more freely, but these were products of joy and relief not despair.

But she hurt everywhere, by the Emperor it hurt so much.

With a pair of deep thumps, the doors of the wind elemental tower were smashed off their hinges. The Inquisitor strode down the steps, his ceramite boots clanking against hard cobble stone. Siesta noted that the massive, curved sword he was holding was crackling with lightning, which meant that he had to be a powerful wind mage.

"What have you bastards done?" He snarled at the assembled school children.

"It wasn't us! I swear!" One of Guiche's friends squealed back.

"DO NOT LIE TO ME!" The Inquisitor thundered, launching himself at the group of boys with inhuman speed.

Siesta glimpsed hazy images of bisected golems and conjured fireballs as she swam in and out of consciousness. She applauded Hian's stunning blade work as he butchered six of Guiche's Valkyries at once. She smirked when she saw him smash two boys' heads together in rage, including the one who had suggested that they rape her. It was so cathartic, so great to see those horrible boys put in their place.

The last blissful image she had before passing out was that of Hian's fist connecting with Guiche's stomach.

~I~

The smell of herbs and alcohol wafted into her nostrils, as she regained consciousness. Even without opening her eyes she could tell that she was in the healer's clinic. _Wait, there were voices._ She kept her eyes shut to listen in on the conversation.

The voice of Louise Valliere carried across her ears.

"What happened? Will she be alright?" She asked with genuine worry in her voice.

"Multiple bone fractures, extensive internal bruising and lacerations. The water mages inform me that it will take two days for her to make a full recovery." Hian stated dispassionately. "That stupid gaggle of boys will take considerably longer to heal, except for the Gramont boy; I accidentally let him off easy and I let his girlfriend run free."

Siesta felt a tinge of guilt in her chest for being suspicious about Louise falling unconscious in his presence. She felt bad for getting the feeling that he had some kind of ulterior motive for helping her. _A man as kind as this wouldn't have any dark secrets or a twisted manipulative nature, would he?_ The maid told herself.

"Considerably longer? You chopped off Albert's arm and tore someone else's leg from its socket, and you don't think that that's a serious thing?" Louise hissed. "What is wrong with you?"

"Where I come from those are called flesh wounds, spare limbs are easy enough to come by and attach." Hian declared with pride.

"So about her being descended from one of your Imperium's soldiers, is that true?" Louise asked, quickly changing the topic from death.

"Yes, and that's why I'm going to ask you to buy her service contract from Count Mott."

Siesta heard Louise sigh. "Alright, I'll write my family for an advance on my allowance, but convincing Mott to give up the contract is an entirely different matter."

"I'll convince him" Hian declared impassively. "And I will repay you ten-fold for this favor Valliere."

"No, you don't have to repay me. No one should have to suffer like this for that awful harpy Montmorency's ego." Louise spat.

Siesta knew of Louise's bitter antagonism with Montmorency, how the girl always belittled the poor pinkette, but it still made her happy to see someone, no some human beings sticking up for her. She was so happy that she couldn't restrain a twitch of glee.

"We should leave and let her rest" Louise said helpfully before both her and Hian's footsteps faded into the background.

As the maid drifted off into a deep sleep, she dreamt of a nice house by a vineyard with a little white fence surrounding it.


	4. Chapter 4

_Guderian2nd: I was annoyed when you predicted who the owner of the Staff of Destruction was, I really did. And yes, I did put the runes in, unfortunately for you, they aren't Gandalfr runes... :) Thanks for reading and reviewing though!_

This one was a doozy to write, the thing just kept expanding, and expanding and there was nothing I could do save to keep typing. That being said, I'm decently proud of how this one turned out and I hope that the feedback I get on this board will help me create a polished product free of grammatical failures and awkward prose.

I'm also quite happy because to put this out, because chapter 4 is where the plot divergences really begin. Like Count Mott (or rather his corpse) playing a much larger role in the story. Enjoy!

Kudos to "the atom" for giving a quick skim to catch grammatical errors and typos.

Also, I'm feeling a bit wary that I've nearly hit the 20,000 word mark and only twenty people have bothered to leave a comment. Even if it's just a one sentence blurb about how you thought this story was great or total shit, it would be nice to know that people are giving this story a chance. Cookies for pointing out flaws and ways I can improve as a writer.

~I~

Thought for the Day: The Martyr's grave is the foundation of the Imperium.

~I~

The next morning

Headmaster's Office

The thick oaken doors to the Headmaster's office swung open, and Thaddeus Hian strode in with Louise Valliere trailing behind. "Greetings headmaster, Professor Colbert, what business do you have with us?" He said curtly.

The last time Colbert had seen Hian, he had been wrapped in a colossal suit of gun-metal grey armor, with a massive sword and pistols strapped to his form. The man had been an avatar of violence and menace, but right now, he was quite different. Miss Valliere had apparently acquired a set of well to do merchant's clothes for the man; but even without the bulky armor plate, the professor noted that the man was still huge. By Colbert's estimation, he was at least six and a quarter feet tall and well built; he vaguely wondered what they were feeding people in Hian's homeland.

The man's choice of clothing was also… interesting. He was wearing a long, dark grey duster over a set of light brown travel pants and a light grey woolen shirt, the perfect kind of outfit to melt into the shadows or the depths of a crowd. Aside from the incredibly subtle bulges of concealed firearms and blades in his outfit, the only distinguishing features he had were his jet black hair and the small crimson ][ medallion hanging around his neck.

Colbert gritted his teeth, not only was Hian at least a triangle class wind mage if his command of lightning was anything to go by, but he was also a professional in the fields of espionage and subterfuge.

The Flame Snake grasped his wand tightly, beads of sweat running down his forehead.

"You do understand that the situation you caused in the Vestri courtyard yesterday puts us in a difficult situation, don't you?" Professor Colbert asked nonchalantly, secretly aiming his wand at Hian from beneath the folds of his robes.

Surprisingly, it was Louise who responded. "That won't be a problem professor, headmaster." She said evenly, tilting her head slightly in deference to each of them in turn. "The actions of the familiar reflect on the summoner and as such the Valliere family will respond to any grievances the afflicted parties may have."

As she finished, Hian gave her a subtle nod of approval which elicited a nearly imperceptible smirk from the Valliere child. Colbert swore under his breath as he caught the silent exchange; the man had to be separated from the Valliere scion, for her own good.

The professor fumed with rage at the thought of a trained killer like Hian using one of his most diligent and hardworking students as a pawn.

"Well, I guess that settles that, less paper work for me!" The Headmaster said lazily, puffing on a simple wooden pipe.

Colbert's left eyebrow twitched in annoyance. _Has the old fool gone senile?_ _Does he even care about the state of education here anymore?_ Colbert screamed mentally.

Then he turned and looked at the Headmaster; his eyes were glazed over in reminiscence and the man was gripping the arm rests of his chair tight enough that the veins on his hand were bulging. Colbert had seen that kind of distant look on the faces of war veterans who had seen more than they wanted to.

The fire mage briefly wondered what kind of thing could've traumatized someone as potent and strong willed as Old Osmond. Unable to reach a satisfactory conclusion, he turned away, sheathing his wand as it became apparent that no one here was going to make even more of a scene over a simple maid.

But, he still had a job to do, clearing his throat he pulled out his copy of _Runes of the Familiar Volume XVI. _"Mr. Hian, now that you are out of your armor, may I ask to see your familiar runes?"

Louise interjected again. "Professor, from what I've learned Hian is a member of some kind of knightly order in his homeland. Shouldn't we address him as Sir?"

Said knight cleared his throat loudly. "Louise, I thought we agreed that there is no direct parallel to the Ordo Malleus in Halkeginia."

As soon as Hian mentioned 'Ordo Malleus', Headmaster Osmond shivered and snapped to attention. With that, Colbert's suspicions were verified; the headmaster most certainly knew something important about Hian.

Then Hian stepped forward, revealing his hand and the runic symbols seared into it. "Strangely enough it doesn't appear as if this familiar rune is active. I can glimpse some of its potent power, but it appears dormant for the moment."

The professor's eyes narrowed as the realization dawned on him that the symbols were in an ancient Brimiric language rather than the unified Romalian script adopted two thousand years ago.

"It would appear that your runes are more ancient than I had originally thought, I don't think I'll be able to decipher its meaning with the references in this office." Colbert sighed sadly; it was going to be a long night of reading. However, this entire situation was simply too interesting for him to stop researching into it for petty things like sleep and food

"Why is it important that you learn what the runes say? Isn't it just a proof of summoning or ownership?" The man asked, titling his head in confusion.

Colbert adjusted his glasses, fairly annoyed that Louise hadn't run him through the basics of the familiar summoning process. And if the blush on Louise's face was anything to go by, she had realized that mistake too. Colbert cleared his throat, "The familiar runes not only indicate a bond between mage and familiar, but also indicate elemental affinity. It is important for us to learn about it in order to provide a better education for our pupils."

"I see. Well Professor, I know that this land is based on stacking five categories of magic: wind, water, earth, fire, and void, most of which is fairly self explanatory. But what is 'void' magic?" Hian replied, idly fixing his sleeves.

That question caught Colbert off guard. "Well… we don't really know… anything. The last void mage was Founder Brimir and we only have myths and legends from that time to make conclusions from."

"I see…" He replied disappointedly, before turning to face Osmond. "More importantly though, I do have a favor to ask of you Headmaster. I wish to purchase a staff service contract from one Count Mott and as such, I ask you for you to arrange a meeting with him."

The headmaster stared at the man for a moment, before sighing in exasperation.

"Approved, just don't attack him or anyone else for that matter." The headmaster said tiredly. "A carriage will be waiting for you at the stables two hours after noon."

Colbert watched as the man bowed, a sardonic smile on his face, and then left with Louise following close behind.

"I have a bad feeling about this." Colbert whispered. "And more importantly, what do you know about this Ordo Malleus of his?"

The Headmaster stared straight into Colbert's eyes, fear swirling in his aged eyes. "The Staff of Destruction belonged to one of Hian's compatriots, one by the name of Bellica."

~I~

Louise smiled as she walked into the Alviss Dining Hall without a single insult being thrown her way. Students and faculty members gave her familiar fearful looks from the corner of their eyes as they tried to focus on their lavish breakfasts. It was a unique and refreshing experience for the diminutive pinkette.

Louise sat down as Hian pulled out a chair for her, smiling because she now had three people who were genuinely on her side: Her fiancée, sister Cattleya, and now Sir Hian, despite the fact that the title annoyed him.

"Oh, Great Founder Brimir, and our lady, the Queen, we thank you for this humble meal that you have graciously provided us this morning," the harmonious sound of a prayer sounded. Louise joined in as well, closing her eyes, noting with disapproval that Hian was not joining in. Then again, he wasn't even from Halkeginia, so she supposed that he was just ignorant of the Founder Brimir. _That could be changed over time_, she told herself.

Then just before they began to eat, _she_ just had to show up. Kirche Augusta Frederica von Anhalt Zerbst strode in, over sized breasts bouncing up and down with each deliberately heavy step she took. Louise looked down at her own non-existent chest and sincerely wished that she inherited sister Cattleya's curves instead of sister Eleanor's figure. _Founder damn it all!_

"Oh hoh! So the Zero really did summon a man as a familiar! And _what a fine man you are_." Kirche purred, as she pressed her ample bosom against Hian's back. "With a man as hale and virile as you, I guess we can say little Louise's temper was due to a lack of male companionship."

"Oh Founder! You sad Tristanians and your repressed ways, how do you survive?" Kirche continued, mock swooning.

"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up, you lewd Zerbst!" Louise screeched shrilly.

In response Kirche stuck her tongue out. "Hmmph, you say these things simply because you cannot understand the depths of my passion!"

Surprisingly, Hian wasn't paying attention to the Germanian hussy or her at all; instead he was staring down Tabitha, who had taken up a seat directly opposite from the Inquisitor. Between the oppressive auras radiating from each of the glaring mages, Louise could've sworn that the tension in the air could've been cut with a sword.

Kirche took this as an excellent signal to leave, and the girl backed away from the Inquisitor.

Then some unspoken signal passed between the two combatants, and they began to eat, and eat, and eat, _and eat_. Louise's jaw dropped as the two _inhaled_ plate after plate of food the other students gathered around, placing bets and donating their own breakfasts to the growing spectacle.

Shockingly, it was the diminutive blue haired girl who prevailed.

Howls of disbelief and disappointment rippled through the crowd of students as the few students with the foresight to bet on Tabitha cashed in their bets.

The pinkette gaped in shock as the Inquisitor steadied himself by gripping the table while clutching his stomach. "What manner of sorcery is this? What the hell are you? A whirlpool? A black hole?" He stuttered in disbelief, while shoving a pile of no less than seventeen plates away from his spot at the table.

Tabitha looked up at the Inquisitor and deadpanned. "Hungry."

And then she went right back to chomping on a roasted chicken leg.

A giggle escaped Louise's lips as Hian struggled for words. Then the Inquisitor was bowled over by a large blue dragon, which pinned him to the ground in a bear hug with its powerful forelimbs.

"Kyuuuuu! Kyuuuu! Kyuuuu!" Tabitha's dragon squealed happily, licking the Inquisitor's face with gusto.

"No! I'm not your big brother! Now stop licking me you oversized lizard!" Hian yelled, desperately trying to peel the creature off of his body. Louise noticed that his familiar runes were glowing brightly as he talked to the pale blue dragon.

Louise was confused by Hian's words. Was he having a delusion that the dragon was speaking to him? That was impossible, dragons didn't talk.

Strangely enough, Tabitha herself stopped eating after hearing the exchange. The short blue haired girl turned to her dragon, which warbled sadly at the loss of its new "friend", and angrily hushed it before flying away on its back.

As she watched Tabitha soar into the sky, Louise decided to question Hian about the incident with the dragon, but the Inquisitor interrupted that line of thought.

"Louise, I'm going to the library after I walk off this food, you're more than welcome to join me to help explain the customs of this land to me." Hian said, gently clutching his stomach.

Louise pondered his offer. It wasn't as if another class with Mrs. Chevereuse was going to suddenly make her able to cast magic. More importantly, if she was lucky she might even be able to gain foreign knowledge of magic from Hian.

_Why not?_ She concluded.

"I'll go." Louise said resolutely, pushing in her chair.

"What? No! Come with me to class my darling!" Kirche called out to Hian, leaning over so that he could get a good view of her cleavage.

"Shut up!" Louise shouted back.

Hian interjected in a monotone voice, before striding off. "You know, Mrs. Zerbst, your idea of flirting would be a lot less painful to watch and hear if you weren't so pathetically obvious about it.

Louise Francoise Le Blanc De La Valliere laughed all the way to the school library.

~I~

Several Hours Later

Count Mott's estate

It had been taken him a half hour to scrub out the smell of the dragon's slobber. But it piqued his curiosity that the runes only activated when he was in close proximity with the beast known as Slypheed, and even then it affected him in a shallow and wholly unobtrusive manner. He would have to investigate this later.

Hian stepped out of the carriage alone. He had taken advantage of Colbert's zealous over protectiveness of his students to keep Louise cooped up in the school, citing her safety and education as reasons to leave her behind. In truth, he was simply limiting the number of witnesses he would have to dispose of after this.

Count Mott's estate, which was just down the cobble stone path Hian was one, was large and extravagantly decorated. Hian supposed that this represented his wealth and prestige as one of the Royal Palace's messengers. More importantly, Louise and several of the gossips in the serving staff had indicated his secluded personal life and sadistic tendencies, especially towards the common people.

_It is those two qualities that are the most useful to me_, Hian noted dispassionately. _I pity the man, really. Then again, this wouldn't be the first time I've doomed someone to eternal damnation for political gain. _

_Such is the path of the Xanthite. _He sighed.

A pair of plumed guards stopped him at the estate's wrought iron gates, briefly checking over the papers the Headmaster had given him and patting him down for concealed weapons before letting him through. The only thing they found was an obsidian cube, a wax sealed scroll, and a bag filled with two thousand new gold. Hian smirked at the obliviousness of the guards as he looked down at the digital lasers built into the two rings he had on both of his pointer fingers.

The mansion was even more decadent on the inside; marble busts, silver framed portraits, and richly varnished wood abounded in Mott's estate, and not a weapon or religious icon was in sight. The place was looking more and more like a poorly disguised den of Slaaneshis; and Malleus hit squads had put down entire noble houses for far less than this. Then again, with the warp as orderly and calm as it was on this planet, Hian supposed it didn't matter too much.

A number of attractive looking maids lined up in two columns to greet him; each and every single one of them had a haunted and exhausted look on their faces but they still smiled regardless. _It would appear that Siesta's fears were well founded. _

The head maid, a rather well endowed blonde, walked up to him and curtsied. "If you wish to see the master, his private study is down that corridor." The woman was shaking slightly, no doubt associating his status as a guest of the Count with his sexual deviancies.

Hian smiled beatifically at them. "Thank you so much."

The smile melted away from his face as soon as they were out of sight. As Hian walked into Mott's private study, he took note of the innumerable whips, shock collars, bondage ropes, and assorted sex toys hanging off of racks on the stone walls. _A well decorated dungeon would be a more accurate term, _Hian thought as he scoffed at the primitive nature of Mott's equipment.

"Who are you?" Mott asked angrily as he squeezed the unclothed breast of a young, brown haired girl, eliciting a muffled yelp of pain from beneath a ball gag. In fact, there were two girls tied up near the base of Mott's chair, nearly identical sisters if their appearance was anything to go by.

"Greetings Count Mott, I am Thaddeus Hian, a humble merchant, and I am here to purchase the service contract of one Siesta of Tarbes. I hope we can come to an equitable business agreement today." Hian said evenly, bowing slightly.

"What? I'm busy right now, you filthy commoner. Get out of my sight." The Count drawled angrily, squeezing the gem stone that controlled the shock collars on his two female captives. Hian frowned as the high pitched squeals of pain filled the room.

"Count Mott I beg you to reconsider, I'm sure we can come to an amenable business arrangement in private, without your two household servants around."

Mott snarled, kicking one of the girls in the stomach as he rose to his feet, wand in hand. "Will you shut up, you worthless commoner! I'm trying to enjoy these new purchases here! And I'll do the same with this Siesta girl you seem so intent on saving. Yes, I'll be sure to break that bitch good and force you to watch!"

Clouds of hoarfrost materialized, condensing into lances of ice, all aimed at the Inquisitor. The Inquisitor would have none of this.

Hian snarled in anger, dropping a wax sealed scroll to the ground, which unfurled with a life of its own. Within moments, the air crackled with static and reeked with the smell of burnt ozone. "I almost pity you Mott, even now you still believe yourself the superior in this situation, when you are in fact the prey."

"What? What have you done?" The Count yelled.

"I never was good with illusory spells, so I had to have my colleagues bind certain spells into scrolls for me. It was quite embarrassing. Now that scroll, contained a spell, similar to a privacy field. Basically, no one can hear us and one can see us within." Hian rambled lazily, pulling an obsidian cube from his pocket.

Realization dawned on Count Mott's face; _This Hian was here to kill him!_ But it was too late for the sadistic noble.

"Take him now, Azgothus." Hian snapped.

With a booming laugh, the Bloodthirster erupted from its prison in the form of a bloody, molten brass spear, skewering Mott's twisted heart. The man screamed in utter, soul rending agony as the Daemon spear dissolved, trans-mutating into streams of molten brass that clogged his blood vessels one by one.

Hian stared down at the dying count with glacial heartlessness as the Daemon tore through Mott's corrupt soul like a starving Tyranid Carnifex through an orphanage full of disabled children. And for some reason, Mott's painful end and future eternity of damnation at the hands of Azgothus was profoundly emotionally gratifying.

As the Count's struggles began to die down, The Inquisitor kneeled down by one of Mott's victims and removed her gag. "Please, tell me your name and hometown, child, and your sister's name too." He asked softly.

"Jaqueline, Jaqueline D'Arayet and my sister over there is Jenni. We're both from Ypres, a small town just outside of Tristania. Are you going to take us back home, sir?" The girl replied, her eyes shining with fear, and worst of all, hope.

The Inquisitor Lord could sear a man's flesh from his bones with a gesture, flip over a battle tank with nothing more than his mind, and slice through a meter of plasteel with a single blow from his force sword, but putting a person's memories back together after changing them was far beyond his level of finesse.

He cursed his own weakness as every death he caused or allowed was another failure on his part, another reminder of his impotence.

His only other choice was to lock the two girls away in a dungeon for the rest of their natural born lives, left to rot, with only him and Azgothus as occasional company. He nearly retched while thinking about that.

_This is the best possible choice._ He told himself.

"I see, those are nice names, Jaqueline and Jenni... but I'm sorry, you won't be going home. I'm so sorry." Hian said mournfully.

The digital lasers built into his rings flashed crimson twice, instantly killing the two girls. Each shot was perfect, effortlessly drilling through their skulls and severing the link between the medulla oblongata and the spinal cord. It had been quick and painless, the best he could do.

"Azgothus; get the fuck up and give me Siesta's service contract." Hian spat bitterly, his hands shuddering slightly as he tried to control the nausea inducing sense of self loathing coming over him.

_God-Emperor, when had he become so sentimental again? _Hian thought to himself. _It has to be the warp here and its utter lack of Chaos and discord; how very ironic that the very thing I've searched for all my working life is crushing my resolve…_

The body of Mott rose from the floor, healthy, hale, whole, and grinning like a Cheshire cat; in truth, Azgothus was wearing the sad little man like a coat now. Hian grimaced; he had his inside "man" in the Tristanian royal court now, but was it worth it?

"Of course, my master, how could I possibly defy a warrior great enough to execute two defenseless children?" The fake Mott laughed mockingly.

~I~

The king's convoy of carriages had been ambushed in the forest by a golems in the forests near the Romalian border, not that it was important to him. The King himself couldn't care less about the loss of men and material, after all, he was going to kill everyone and burn everything anyways. Besides, he was a void mage, the inheritor to Brimir's amazing ability to make things die, quickly.

What did he have to be afraid of?

In any case, he'd get to see if his "Royal Guard" were worth their pay tonight; and a fun show in the meanwhile. _Everyone loves to see people die, unless it's someone important to them, but I don't have any of those! Fun, fun, fun!_ The King noted sagely.

And so, King Joseph Gaul of Gallia watched with morbid curiosity as the captain of his Royal Guard was flayed alive by a bolt of sickly emerald lightning, revealing, for a brief moment the thread like strands of muscle and vein covered organs beneath the skin before he was rendered into ash. "How interesting, how

fascinating" the King said to himself, downing a glass of wine while leaning against his stopped carriage. "Perhaps I should take up anatomy as my next hobby; maybe I can dissect the heart to see what makes it feel. Hahahahaaaaaa."

From the darkness of the forest, the creatures struck, briefly illuminated by the blazing flashes of their horrifying weaponry. They were death incarnate, shadowy specters of fluid metal that knit itself back together when struck.

"For Gallia!" One mage screamed as he threw himself into the darkness waving his sword wand. Joseph scoffed at his puerile sense of nationalism; didn't the fool realize that an arbitrarily defined population and landmass had no intrinsic meaning?

His tortured screaming disabused his comrades from trying the same. Moments later, a hunch backed golem crawled out of the base earth behind the Gallians. Joeseph noted curiously that the brave man's lacerated skin was draped over its shoulders like a pelt and trails of human intestine and muscle were stuck to its long claws. _How frightening_, Joseph thought to himself, _one of the most wondrous terror weapons I've ever seen._

Any other man would've curled up in abject terror, or at least vainly attempted to flee before the mirror devils. Yes, mirror devils was what his Elven mercenary, Bidashal, had called them before running away like a little girl. Joseph giggled at the fact that he was the only human who knew of something that frightened the knife ears.

Within moments a deluge of fireballs had smashed into the construct, taking vast chunks out of its body and filling the air with the smell of cooked flesh and molten metal. Curiously enough, the thing disappeared in a blaze of green flame when it was sufficiently damaged, evidence of a failsafe in the King's mind. His thoughts were interrupted as the ripping sounds of more of that emerald lightning began to pick off his men again.

Now there were only two other mages left and they still insisted on fighting back, desperately flinging magic spells at the undying golems. They just couldn't see how pointless it was; no matter how hard it struggled the rabbit could not fend off the dragon forever. But, in a very profound way, Joseph envied them. Desperation, fear, anger at the cruel vagaries of fate: all of them were things that he wanted, things that his damnable brother had stolen from him.

_What a pity. _Joseph thought. _And I had so many plans to burn Halkeginia to the ground. It would've been so much fun! And maybe, just maybe all of the suffering and misery would have broken the tomb of ice around my heart! _

Then the rest of the creatures emerged from the shadows; they were twice as broad as a man, two heads taller even when hunched, and hauled vicious bladed cannons that blazed with sickly energy. The same pale emerald light contained in their weapons seeped from facsimiles of spinal columns and skeletal rib cages. Clawed feet began to stomp their way over to the mad King of Gallia, reverberating with promises of pain and agony.

From that moment on, Joseph knew that he was going to die, and yet he still felt nothing. _How fitting that a mage of the void should die feeling nothing_. He laughed bitterly.

Then an unearthly voice issued through the air, like sandpaper against flesh, as if the very air itself was offended by the voice's existence. It resonated with primeval dread and menace, as if drawn from the depths of a ravenous black hole. +Do not fear flesh thing, this pitiful morass of flaring neurons and bio-chemical reactions you call existence will finally have meaning beyond bringing more of your pathetic ilk into the universe. I will use your skin to conquer this pitiful land called Halkeginia+

Joseph walked up to the offending creature, most likely the leader, laughing all the way. He stared into soulless pyres of emerald fire set into the eyepieces of the anthropomorphic face of death itself… before spitting in its eye.

And then the King began to rage, he believed in every word he said, he wanted to lose himself within his indignity and anger, but it didn't happen. Even as he grasped at the fleeting phantoms of hate in his mind, he recognized that his life was just that, a fleeting ghost of feeling, like watching a recording of a stranger's life.

"Meaning? Life? You belittle my understanding creature. How can one find such a nebulous concept through this limited perspective of sight and sound? In the end, no matter what pseudo philosophical justification one offers, it all boils down to irrational feelings. And yet, even that much has been taken away from me by that damnable brother of mine. Now tell me, will I feel anything if you slay me? Will I feel if I turn you into a pile of molten scrap?"

With inhuman speed, Joseph drew his wand and whispered an incantation.

"Explosion"

The golem screeched in an outpouring of crackling static as it was thrown backwards thirty feet. The other constructs raised their cannons but held their fire; Joseph briefly wondered what they were doing now that their leader had been killed.

Except it hadn't died, the creature rose from the crater it had made in the ground upon impact, a glowing energy shield flickering on and off around its frame. +So, you hold the power of the Dragon, mortal. You interest me Joseph of Gallia. For that I will show you something equally intriguing, I will show you Necrontyr+

With a dozen bounding steps, the creature strode over and placed its clawed hand on the King's shoulder. It was cold, so cold and profoundly empty that even Joseph shivered.

_There was screaming, so much screaming. Screaming as Elves fled from a massive pseudo stone gate in the Saharan desert, desperate to flee the deathless legions of lich-automata spewing forth. There was screaming as metal killers stalked the streets of Halkeginia's great cities, wearing the bloody skins of their victims' loved ones in twisted mockery of live and life. _

_And then there was screaming as the very planet came alive, a primordial howl of rage that, impossibly, echoed through the void of deep space. There was screaming as the tectonic plates rearranged to reveal tamed warp rifts and web way nexuses, the creations of the Slah-Haii, the Anathema, the Old Ones, not the pathetic imitations the Eldar produced._

Joeseph shuddered at the revelation. _The entire planet was a sentient creation! Was he an artificial creation too? Was he a mere plaything of cosmic beings beyond his comprehension? _

_Then the Necron void ships came, menacing crescents and scythes of living metal hung in high orbit around the stricken world like necrotic vultures. Gauss lightning, tachyonic beams, and chained fragments of solar flares smashed into the planet below, boiling the oceans and cracking the tectonic plates._

_And the planet fought back. Wind stones and fire stones were vomited forth by the web way portals in quantities incomprehensible to the human mind. The glittering blossoms of millions upon millions of fire stones lit up the planet's gravity well with a newborn star's worth of nuclear fire while entire continents lifted off of the planet's crust and smashed into the Necron star fleets. _

Joseph gaped in aweas the crude projectiles were propelled to relativistic velocities by wind stones, heedless of the surviving humans and elves still on them.

_And then there was a red planet. The same red planet that Joseph had always seen in his dreams,_

Joseph stumbled back, bleeding from every orifice in his face. He laughed and laughed as rolled around the ground like an utter lunatic. "It's magnificent! Magnificent I tell you! It makes everything I planned for look like an initiation prank! I. Love. It" The mad king screamed into the night.

At the very least, now he knew why Viscount Wardes' mother went insane!

~I~

Ypres village

The sky was cloudy and foreboding, but Josephine D'Arayet had hope that it wouldn't rain.

She was an old woman now, but many years ago she had been a dancer and an actress, capturing the hearts of men and women across Tristain. None of that was why she was content with her life; she was content because she had raised two wonderful granddaughters, Jaqueline and Jenni.

It had been tough raising them, after both of their parents and her husband had perished in the plague outbreak fifteen years ago, but every minute had been worth it. She loved when the two girls had shown off the dances they learned to her and questioned her eagerly on her life as a young woman. She had loved how the two girls would take care of animals the village boys had cruelly hurt for amusement.

She missed them so much. It had been three months since the last letter and she had hoped that nothing bad had happened to them in Tristania, the capital, as they searched for work. But today, she had received an ornate satchel from the two girls, heavily laden with something.

She sat on her porch, gingerly slicing the wrapping off of the package with a kitchen knife. Josephine gasped in shock as a deluge of coins spilled from the satchel as soon as she cut the wrap. The pile had to have been worth thousands of new gold at the least!

Then in the pile of coins she spotted a letter and the old woman snatched it up, eager to find out where the money had come from.

_To: Mademoiselle D'Arayet_

_I'm sorry._

_~Anon_

She looked at the two hair clips glued to the letter, the ones she had sent her two baby girls for their sixteenth birthdays and knew exactly what it meant.

The rain began to fall.

*Author's note: The two girls were killed because it is never a good thing to have people know that you employ soul rending abominations from hell to mind control important leaders. Memory manipulation is out of the question as that generally leaves the target a drooling vegetable for the rest of their lives and using the Daemon to reign them in is probably an even more terrible idea. In addition, killing all witnesses, even if it requires burning the planet to a cinder, is how the Warhammer 40k Inquisition rolls.


	5. Chapter 5

Anonymous: I wanted to put in the execution scene and the aftermath of that to set something up later and to explore the differences in thinking between the two settings. As for the power disparity between the Necrons and everyone else... well.. let's just say that I have that covered.

~I~

Abbadon953: While it is sad to lose a reader, I must clarify some things. Most importantly, is that I believe that 40k works that do not bring the darkness of the setting on a personal level are missing the point. For me, 40k is the story of otherwise normal people struggling in a universe that demands untold suffering and soul crushing decisions simply to stave off extinction of the species. I feel that keeping the GrimDark impersonal is just using it as window dressing to get larger body counts and big explosions, which is ultimately meaningless. So I guess we simply disagree on our fundamental interpretation of the franchise.

First off, part of an Inquisitor's job is to be a ruthless black ops agent; quite simply, that means no loose ends, period. Our Inquisitor was stated to be acting out of character for a moment here, as back in the hellhole of a galaxy he calls home any Inquisitor worth his salt would've just shot them without a second thought. Hell, canonically, the Inquisition has even exterminated entire populations to keep knowledge of the Daemonic secret, as in the First Armageddon war.

As a further addendum, it was also explicitly stated that our Inquisitor sucks at memory manipulation, to the point where he'll leave the target a drooling wreck for life. Otherwise this story would just be a continual spamming of mind control powers and hypnosis. And being touched by a freaking Chaos Daemon is only marginally better for one's mental health as Louise will soon discover in the coming chapters, although as a mage she at least has a chance of enduring.

While I am sad that some readers may find this story too grim for their tastes, this is the story I want to tell and I respect your decision to discontinue reading despite that.

~I~

Chapter 5 is up after a long hiatus due to summer time laziness and vacationing. Please tell me if things don't make sense or if I have written awkward prose. Some events and references in this chapter may not make sense without reading the previous chapters since it references specific events in the previous chapters.

Thought for the Day: The rewards of tolerance are treachery and betrayal.

~I~

Estate of the Former Count Mott

_Disgusting pile of meat, miserable excretion of decadence! Only a bastard mongrel of that He-bitch, Slaanesh, would consider this a release! _

Azgothus snarled as he sifted through the deceased Count Mott's memories, gagging as visions of writhing bodies and perverse hedonism filtered through. The creature growled and shuddered as it tried to discern whether this was some sort of snub or insult. Tortured faces and fanged maws exploded out from underneath the clothes of its new, pathetic man form, howling its primeval rage in eldritch tongues that could flense the sanity from a man's mind as surely as the teeth of a chain sword could the flesh of a new born babe.

Unfortunately, the Inquisitor had seen fit to release the estate's staff from Mott's service before leaving; the little bastard had seen fit to deny him even the small reprieve of tearing the still squirming souls of those miserable, servile sheep from their fleshy prisons. He howled again, without words or noise, but still the very walls of the estate cringed in fear, paint peeling like scabs from burning flesh.

The orders from his enslaver flashed through his mind again: honeyed words, treacherous smiles, flashing daggers in the dark, and a spineless girl-queen to be. The indignity of it all! Forced to play mind games with corpulent and spineless mortals suckling on the teat of complacency and luxury! Imprisoned within a filth ridden sack of meat! Were he unbound this disgustingly primitive abode would be naught more than a crater, its flagstones cast to the eastern skies, and this pathetic nation nothing more than a wasteland of corpses and ash!

_Hate! Nothing but hatred, darker than the void of space, for the foot soldiers of the corpse-Emperor! Nothing but poison and suffering for that bastard Inquisitor!_

With a wag of his finger, the Daemon-Count telekinetically plucked a passing song bird from the air. He gently stroked the catatonic animal once before ripping its head off and crushing it into bloody paste with his fist. The beast's rage subsided, pleased by the grisly murder before it. Horrific appendages and orifices that ululated across the Daemon's skin also sank back beneath warp tainted skin, hissing contentedly as they drank in giblets of viscera and rivulets of blood.

_Even the strongest will cannot endure the death of its mortal coil, Hian._ _And you are alone and confused. _The beast chortled, silently mocking the Inquisitor's confused and uncharacteristically remorseful decision to send part of Mott's wealth to the deceased girls' next of kin. _And that… that makes you easy prey. _

At that a hideously wide grin split the Count's face, crimson specks of blood dripping from torn facial muscles.

Unfortunately, he would have to adopt subtlety into his modus operandi. For the hexagrammic wards and binding rituals etched into his warp-flesh were immaculate marvels of psychic engineering; quadruple bound by a quartet of Malleus Inquisitors and sanctified with the blood of a hundred innocent souls. The augur runes that allowed the Inquisitor to track his psychic actions from afar were of equal, if not greater quality. His abilities were restricted, his every use of psychic energy monitored and catalogued. He would have to play his hand in mortal real-politik.

"_A damnable state of affairs by any metric"_ Azgothus snarled. "_But it will be oh-so very amusing for the great hunter of Daemons to be slain by the chattel he professes to serve and protect_."

He cackled psychotically.

Time after time the champions of mankind were undone by their lesser kin. For the sake of desire, ambition, lust, envy, bigotry, or even simple arrogance; such constructs were a triviality for Chaos to un-knit. Humanity's thin veneers of civilization and rationality served only to chain the mighty to the fearful concerns of the weak, worthless masses. The strong could never prosper when chained to the weak with morality and empathy, only Chaos was truly strong, Azgothus would show the Inquisitor this truth, in his final, painful moments.

Luckily, the Inquisitor's grasp of the ether realm had been erratic as of late, which would make corrupting mortal souls to his service all the easier, but the creature wondered what was undermining his resolve, making him go soft. The only thing of note was that his enslaver had spent much time peering into the deep warp. Perhaps…

With gusto, the creature submerged its consciousness into the ether, into the shallows of the warp, where the souls of mortals abounded. Azgothus snorted contemptuously as he navigated through the fleeting dreams and desires of the mortal swine. They lacked purpose, focus; their hopes and ambitions were illusory and flickered away in an eye blink of eternity.

As he pushed through, he noted brighter, more coherent flares of power flickering in the warp. The Daemon recognized them and spat, _Eldar_. But these creatures were different, foreign: more diluted, more clouded, and, most worryingly, lacking the taint of Slaanesh. _Elves, _the word escaping the daemon's tongue unbidden. Other entities flitted through the periphery of his senses, similar to Daemon kind, but utterly cohesive and stagnant, permanently tethered to the material world. But it was all without Chaos; no Chaos.

_How could that be? Why can I not sense my kindred? Where are the brands of the Dark Gods on these miserable mortal cattle? How are those warp creatures tethering themselves to the materium so easily? _

The revelations disturbed the Daemon on many levels; what he saw here was violating what few esoteric laws the warp was subject to. Perhaps this was what the Inquisitor was bothered by; warp entities dwelling permanently in the real universe?

"_No"_ The daemon uttered as it passed through the veil between the mortal dreamscape and the deep warp, the domain of the Dark Gods. He realized now why the Inquisitor had experienced a sudden resurgence in moral character and compassion.

Stagnancy, Emptiness, Purity, Order, Abomination, Impossible

_Impossible! _

~I~

Some distance off of Academy grounds

Louise Valliere flicked her wand at a nearby boulder, which was about four paces across and three paces tall by her estimate.

"Fireball!" the pink haired girl shouted.

A sphere of snowy white light formed over the rock, cracking it in half. A mere aesthetic improvement from her usual random explosions, but it was still progress. She would have to thank Inquisitor Hian for his instruction in magic when he returned; and while she was it, ask him why he so doggedly referred to mages as psykers.

She chewed her lip in deep thought; _perhaps 'Psyker' was an honorary title in his homeland_?

_His homeland…._

Louise's face fell as she considered that last phrase. No matter how great her summon was, she had ultimately failed, she had stolen a warrior from his duties, from his comrades. The girl's knees started to wobble with shame and guilt.

"The lowly zero always fails" she sniffed. "Always"

The noble girl wondered why she hadn't realized the magnitude of her mistake until now. Maybe, maybe it was because she had conditioned herself to forget and ignore her mistakes after so many years of failure and mockery. She wondered whether she was broken inside. Perhaps that was why the Daemon's words had been so enticing.

Her face contorted in confusion as she collapsed to the ground.

_Wait… what daemons? _

Instantly, a wave of half formed and shadowy glimpses of the past assaulted her mind, like a dam bursting in the dark recesses of her soul. Images of desolate wastelands and a nightmarish fiend wearing her mother's skin haunted the shadowy periphery of her vision. Impossible creatures that dwelled in the darkness between stars, a million worlds burning in the fires of war, terrible wonders beyond imagination appeared one after the other, though her mind's eye settled shuddering on a howling obsidian cube, which shattered into a million pieces.

"_BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD!" _Something monstrous howled, nearly knocking her unconscious with its sheer wrongness.

She clutched her head in agony. What in the hell happened in her room that day? As the blistering pain in her head subsided, Louise propped herself up to a slumped standing position, gasping for breath. The girl gritted her teeth as she tried to recall the events of that fateful afternoon. She failed.

There was nothing. There was nothing but a blank void, as if the events of the past afternoon had never happened, if she struggled hard she could make out the illusory shadow of a memory. It was maddening, like searching for a grey pebble in a dense fog. Pinching her temple to make the mental pain subside, the Valliere scion stumbled down the trail back to the academy, the trees and tall grass around her blurring into a mottled mess of green and brown. Her feet carried her along aimlessly while her mind swam in and out of the murky depths of unconsciousness.

After many confusing minutes of quasi drunken wandering the Valliere scion was suddenly yanked off the ground. Flight or fight instincts kicked in response to the unexpected threat. Louise girl screamed like the damned as she thrashed and kicked, fumbling for her wand. A powerful, sinewy hand clamping down on her throat quashed those protests.

"God-Emperor, your voice sounds like a Tyranid Screamer-killer entering combat." The darkly rich voice of Inquisitor Hian boomed in Louise's aching skull, annoyance dripping from every syllable. "Tell me child, how much alcohol have you had? I can think of no other reason for your drunken fumbling and inability to hear me call out to you"

Hian released his hand from Louise's throat, gently lowering the diminutive Valliere to the ground. The girl coughed slightly as she composed herself. Strangely, her crippling headaches had subsided in the man's presence. It was as if she could physically feel a calming aura of stability and resolve around the man, it was like looking at a granite cliff. _This is so strange_, Louise thought to herself.

She opened her mouth to ask Hian about her hallucinations, but the words dried up in her mouth when the terrifying flashback of him grabbing her by the skull and furiously howling catechisms of hate and exorcism flashed through her head. She swallowed, that couldn't have been real, could it?

"Ah… I might have snuck some wine from the Academy" Louise lied lamely, before quickly changing the subject. "So, were you successful in negotiating with Count Mott?"

A sliver of regret and sadness flickered in the man's eyes, before it was instantly crushed beneath an iron curtain of impassiveness. "Yes… Yes… It went well, mostly."

"I… see." Louise blurted out apprehensively. "Shall we go back?"

Hian nodded and turned on his heel, striding away briskly; His dark overcoat fluttering menacingly behind him. Louise noted how eerily similar it was to looking at her mother's back: The single minded purpose, the unspoken promise of violence, the predatory aura. She shook her head, probably best not to think of her mother so soon; who would no doubt be incensed by the news that she had summoned another mage.

Louis took a look around her, wanting to get her bearings before following after Hian. She was in some kind of clearing with a simple log cabin in it, and two very large boulders. Two things caught her interest. On one of the rocks, there was a weather worn and probably very old indentation in the shape of the Aquila. The twin headed eagle motif of Hian's Imperium. On the other was a purple scarf, most definitely the scarf that Headmaster Osmond's secretary, Mrs. Longueville, always wore.

"Louise, are you coming or not?" Hian yelled at her from a distance.

"Yes! Coming!" She shouted back, quickly snatching the purple scarf from the boulder. She'd return it to Mrs. Longueville, some hooligan had probably stolen it and thrown it here in the forest. She made a note to return here and explore the house here.

As she walked over to her partner, doubts filled her mind. Hian had definitely done something to her, but it wouldn't be prudent to confront him directly. Something was off about this man though, too many strange things had happened with him around for her to be fully comfortable. Still, still, he was the first person aside from her older sister Cattleya to unconditionally support her, and that meant so very much to her.

She sniffed her nose gently, holding in a tear.

Louise resigned herself to waiting and seeing how her relationship with her partner played out, and she hoped for the best, she really did.

~I~

Later that evening

Mrs. Longueville, more commonly known as the legendary thief Fouquet the Crumbling Dirt, born as Matida de Saxe Gothe, prowled silently through the forest, face obscured by a dark, mottled cloak. Every step was calculated to produce minimal noise and disturbance. It was time to pack up shop; she had all the information she needed to break into the academy vault thanks to that bumbling academic, Colbert. A little flash of cleavage here and there plus a bottle of Gallian wine and the fool was spewing out the academy's structural flaws like no tomorrow.

She snorted as she thought of how pampered and incompetent these nobles were. Unlike them she had fought for her power, training and practicing until she herself was among the small elite who could call themselves Square mages. The Royals of her homeland, Albion, had taken everything from her; her family, her lands, and her own noble inheritance all because of a petty feud over an arranged marriage.

How fitting it was for her to take everything from those bloated pigs in return.

Matilda slapped herself gently, now was not the time to think about the wrongs of the past. She was a professional, and as such the mission came first; steal the Staff of Destruction from the academy vault and hand it to that bastard, Wardes. There was more at stake here than her personal status, Tiffania's safety was at stake here. Without the treacherous Viscount of Wardes' support, there was no guarantee that her adoptive sister or her orphanage wouldn't be caught up in the Albionese civil war or that Wardes' Reconquista associates wouldn't just raze the place to the ground.

Matilda snarled. "Just get this over with and find a way to get Tiffania and the orphans out of Albion." She told herself.

Then she reached her base of operations. An open clearing with an old log cabin and two boulders, one of which was her golem in disguise and broken down; the other was probably the after math of a extremely powerful stone prison spell in a battle decades ago, judging by the weathering on the stone's face. To be honest, she was curious what kind of combatant could possibly warrant overkill to that extent, but it was best not to disturb the dead.

Then she noticed that the purple scarf she left out to dry was missing from its place on her disassembled golem.

"Damnit" she growled. "Discovered already"

There was no time left to waste. Tonight would be the night. She whipped out her wand and brought her golem back to life, pulling stone from the other boulder too to bulk up her stone servant. It was possible that the academy had prepared some sort of defense against her and she needed every advantage she could get to do this. "Golem, heed my call! May the spirit of the Founder give you strength!"

The monstrosity of rock and compacted dirt took shape, pulling itself upright to its full height. The thing dwarfed its master by nearly thirty five feet and lowered its Minotaur sized fist so that Matilda could climb on board. Before she left, she turned to the stone prison she had mutilated to make her golem bigger. "I'm sorry. Whoever or whatever you were. Rest in peace"

Then the golem began to march away towards the academy, the legendary thief Fouquet standing atop its shoulders, ready for battle.

And in its wake something terrible began to emerge from hibernation after fifty years of imprisonment.

~I~

_After the Elven professor Bidashal fled from the Necron ambush in Gallia, the Saharan Tribal Republic has been mobilizing for war. Fortuitously, the immortal Phoenix Lord Fuegan and a force of Fire Dragon Exarchs, each a master warrior in of themselves, have arrived via the gravity drive to assist their primitive cousins in the coming war. It has yet to be seen whether the primitive Exodite Eldar of the Sahara will heed the wisdom of their star faring cousins or whether they shall all perish in the fires of war. _

Capital of the Saharan Tribal Republic

"Luctiana, this is insane! Travelling into the human lands to fight the Yngir, the Necrons?" Arie yelled in exasperation, tightly gripping onto his fiancé's hand.

"Insane? No way! I would be insane not to go! This is a once in a lifetime opportunity to go out and study humans in the field!" The female elf responded; giddy with glee. "Not to mention that this is the first time in six thousand years that the Tribal Republic has seen a Craftworlder, let alone Aspect warriors! How exciting! We'll make history Arie!"

"No, you'll die before you can make any history!" Arie spluttered again. "Haven't you heard the stories of the mirror devils? How their green lightning can dissolve steel like butter? How they can get back up after taking blows that would kill an Elf a hundred times over?

"A-r-i-e. You need to learn your history; our ancestors beat the Yngir six thousand years ago. I'm sure we can do it again. Besides we're just going to be tagging along to document things." Luctiana huffed, pulling her hand out of her fiance's grasp and sassily placing them on her hips. "Besides… Uncle Bidashal says it's ok. You don't want him to think my fiancé is cowardly, do you?"

Said fiancé spluttered incoherently as he tried to formulate a response that wouldn't end with him being forced to battle unstoppable death machines. But by the time his wits had half recovered, Luctiana was gone, having run off to pester interview one of the Fire Dragon Exarchs who had arrived through a one off gravity drive of some sort, quill pen and papyrus notebook in hand. Arie swore that the warrior was about to face palm.

He sighed. "Looks like there's no choice, I have to confront Bidashal directly."

He jogged over to her fiancé's uncle and tapped him on the shoulder, apparently stunning him out of a moment of deep thought. "Yes, my boy?"

"Uh, uncle, I was wondering what your reasoning is for allowing Luctiana and I to go on this expedition. Isn't it a bit dangerous?" Arie suggested meekly; Luctiana's uncle had always frightened hi, what with his rigid and icy demeanor.

The elder Elf turned to him, an air of solemnity and gravitas like nothing Arie had ever seen etched across his face. "I barely escaped the human kingdom of Gallia with my life against these creatures. The legends were true; The Necrons are an extinction level threat to the Tribal Republic, more so than the humans of Halkeginia could ever be."

Bidashal tipped his broad rimmed fedora, shuddering momentarily before continuing. "Even as we speak, the council is mobilizing for total war, despite the proclamations that we should just wait until the humans are all dead by that buffoon Lord Eshmael. You would most likely be drafted into the line infantry and die in battle. That is why I volunteered the two of you for this. As historians the both of you will be away from the frontlines where I can keep an eye on you and Luctiana."

Arie stared at Bidashal for a moment before the realization sank in; within a few months, the world as he knew it may end for good. He swallowed his fear. "Thank you uncle; and I guess we can be happy that Luctiana can finally study human culture up close." Arie said with forced mirth.

Bidashal clapped him on the shoulder. "Good man. I always knew you would be a good match for my niece." Then he turned to leave. "Now if you excuse me, I must discuss things with the good Exarch Xelos before his master, the Phoenix Lord, Fuegan, departs"

"Wait, the Burning Lance is not fighting by our side?" Arie blurted incredulously.

"No. Fate calls him elsewhere. But do not fear Arie, a hundred of his chosen disciples, his Exarchs stand with the republic." Bidashal stated loudly; a bit too loudly Arie noted, even uncle wasn't quite sure of this.

"Why couldn't our craft world kin send more warriors? Surely a hundred warriors are not enough, no matter how mighty." Arie asked critically.

"They did not come through the webway or the Immaterium. They had to arrive in a more… esoteric fashion. Many died on their way here. Do not mock their sacrifice, now excuse me." Bidashal stated tersely before walking off, leaving an embarrassed Arie behind.

He stewed in his thoughts for a while, wondering how to best insure that he and his fiancé survived the coming storm. _Why did things have to be so complicated?_ He sighed inside.

"Hey! Arie! Come meet my new friend, Revaqas!" Luctiana called out to him from across the courtyard, standing next to a Fire Dragon aspect warrior and a large contraption called a jet-bike or so he was told. "Come quick."

Arie ran over to them, slightly nervous at the imposing sight of their new caretaker. The warrior was large, towering over them in his thick, ornate armor; his face was impeccably composed and majestic, as if sculpted from marble. The impression of power was even further reinforced by the massive fluted cannon strapped to his back, tipped with a wickedly serrated bayonet. This was the kind of man who Arie would love to see in the halls of power and the seat of military command instead of those doddering old fools and petty demagogues the republic called elders.

He was snapped out of his reverie of awe by Luctiana's incoherent babbling about craft-world culture. "Did you know that in the craft worlds everyone changes personalities to match their profession every century or so? Doesn't that sound like fun? Becoming a new person every once in a while."

"What?" Arie blurted out, confused.

"I am afraid that it is not 'fun' as you put it." The Exarch droned emotionlessly. "It is a disorienting experience to find that one is incapable of emotionally connecting with former friends and bond mates. A necessary price to pay to avoid having our essence metaphysically consumed by She Who Thirsts, the Dark Prince of Excess. As a note, young one, Exarchs such as myself do not experience such disorientation."

_Slaanesh… isn't a fairy tale? _Arie thought to himself, shuddering involuntarily.

True to her nature, Luctiana completely ignored the horrifying implications and revelations of that statement and continued her line of questioning. "Why don't you have to go through the path system? Are you special compared to the other Craftworlders, Revaqas?"

"Sometimes, when one of our kindred follows the path of the warrior he or she discovers a special affinity with battle. In due time, he or she is infused with the spirit of Khaela Mensha Khaine, the bloody handed god of war." The warrior managed to drone out without emotion. "They are then given the honor of bringing Khaine's wrath against the Eldar people. It is an honor, but not one without sacrifice."

"Is that why you can't appear to speak in anything more than a monotone?" Arie accidentally blurted out.

"Yes. By emptying ourselves of extraneous desires and thoughts we enter a state of enlightenment, allowing us to better channel the spirit of the war God Khaine and perfect the art of war. Emotional expression in speech is superfluous, and wasted motions are anathema to true warriors." Revaqas deadpanned, completely oblivious to the derogatory nature of the rhetorical question.

_Amazing, this is like an entirely new species of ditz when compared to my fiancé. _Arie thought.

Then the entire plaza fell silent, every one of the Craft world Eldar bowed deeply, with the assembled Saharan elves following suit shortly after. The representatives of the Saharan council filed in with the Burning Lance himself leading the procession. Arie snuck a glance up at the fabled warrior and his jaw dropped. If people were candles flickering in the dark, Fuegan could be likened to a star. Power and majesty radiated from the Phoenix Lord like light emanating from the desert sun, the very air around him seemed to bend and distort to try and contain his power.

_Brothers, sisters; we go to war._ The being boomed, beaming thoughts directly into the minds of all those present, for words were far beneath a demi-god. _The destruction of the Yngir and their C'tan masters is our destiny, the fulfillment of prophecy. Go forth. I will return for you in the final battle, when the darkest night falls. _

At once Saharan dragon riders began to mount their steeds, making last minute adjustments to riding straps. The Burning Lance's Fire Dragon exarchs simply leaped onto waiting jet bikes with practiced grace. Revaqas grabbed Arie and his fiancé by the scruff and dragged them on board, telling them to hold on tight.

An armored hand grasped his shoulder. It was Fuegan. Arie's mind raced, trying to figure out what the Phoenix lord could want with him. Fuegan pressed some sort of glass and metal slab, embossed with a double headed eagle motif, into his hand. The Saharan elf simply looked at the Eldar warrior with confusion.

_My children, Luctiana, Arie. The bearer of this mutant eagle symbol will need this data-slate. _The Phoenix Lord beamed into their minds. _Even here the humans of the Imperium have a role to play. Pray you do not underestimate this man. _

And with that the combined Elf-Eldar expedition soared into the air, jet bikes and dragons roaring into the sky.

~I~


End file.
